In 1839, Fredrik Barfod's quarterly journal Brage og Idun, the first transnational journal with an explicit pan-Scandinavian agenda, was published and circulated to Scandinavian, mainly Danish and Swedish, subscribers. The term "Scandinavian" was regularly used in the five volumes published between 1839 and 1842, when Barfod's enterprise was stopped due to censorship restrictions. Examples are phrases like "a Scandinavian soul", "Scandinavian endeavours", "Scandinavian nations", "Scandinavian sympathies", a "Scandinavian mindset" and "the Scandinavian North". The dominance of the term "Nordic" in the journal however outnumbers that of "Scandinavian" by a wide margin.³⁸

Significant is also the first "Scandinavian Meeting of Natural Scientists" held in Gothenburg in 1839. Inspired by German, British, and Swiss examples, it was the first in a range of regularly held transnational meetings within different professions and groups across the Nordic region. Advocates of the "Scandinavian idea," attending the meeting in 1839, claimed that it was the first proof of "a scientific union of the North."³⁹ It was interpreted as a sign of Scandinavian recon-

"Om Skandinavien," Granskeren, 15 June 1843.

See also Frederik Wallem, Det norske Studentersamfund gjennom hundrede aar: 1813–1913, vol. 1 (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1916), 272–281; John Sannes, Patrioter, intelligens og skandinaver: Norske reaksjoner på skandinavismen før 1848 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959).

For more on the languages of politics – including their role in shaping citizens' actions and constituting their worldviews, see David Craig and James Thomson, eds., Languages of Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–20.

Ruth Hemstad, "Scandinavianism: Mapping the Rise of a New Concept," Contributions to the History of Concepts 13, no. 1 (2018): 1–21.

In the five published and digitized volumes there are 36 mentions of "Scandinavian" and 300 of "Nordic" (table of contents and register not included).

See Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 49.

ciliation and the necessity of closer collaboration. Numerous speeches during the meeting – published in Scandinavian newspapers and journals such as Brage og Idun, and as part of the published account of the meeting – demonstrated an eager use of the rhetoric of Scandinavianness. Several similar meetings and related associations termed themselves "Scandinavian" from the 1840s onwards.⁴⁰

After the first grand student meeting in Uppsala in June 1843, associations with a pan-Scandinavian goal were established in Copenhagen and Uppsala. The aim was to strengthen the cultural connections between the three Scandinavian countries. In Denmark, the new Skandinavisk Samfund [Scandinavian society], established by students and leaders of the pan-Scandinavian movement, was prohibited by the authorities, due in part to its name. The prohibition caused a sharp debate in the public sphere and probably only helped to strengthen the movement. The Copenhagen cultural elite soon established another association, Skandinavisk Selskab, in September 1843. This time, the association got the necessary approval on the explicit precondition that their meetings would not be used for political discussion. A similar association, Skandinaviska Sällskapet, was established in Uppsala in October 1843.

The pan-Scandinavian profile of these new associations is emphasized in a Swedish encyclopaedia published 1848, in a separate entry on "Scandinavian association."

Scandinavian societies is the name of the associations, which in recent years have been established within as well as outside Scandinavia, in order to contribute to the development of the common Swedish, Norwegian and Danish nationality. The purpose of these associations is to stimulate the feeling of one nationality, not Swedish, Norwegian or Danish, but Scandinavian.⁴¹

The encyclopaedic definition is illuminating regarding the use of the term "Scandinavian," and phrases like "the Scandinavian idea" and "the Scandinavian nationality," and the perceived role of "Scandinavian associations" in this pan-national project. "Scandinavian" associations abroad were part of this picture. Pan-Scandinavian diaspora associations abroad, by and for Scandinavians working in or travelling to other parts of the world, were usually open to all "Scandinavians" in a certain city and commonly termed themselves a "Scandinavian association." They were established in a range of European cities from the 1840s on-

A list of meetings held in the Nordic region from 1839 to 1929 is included as an appendix in Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.

Translation by the author. Svenskt konversationslexikon 3: 547–548.

wards, and among emigrants in the United States, Australia, and Africa.⁴² Several of the new associations abroad stayed in contact with the Scandinavian associations back home, which helped to build up "Scandinavian libraries" abroad by sending "Scandinavian literature," including books, journals, and newspapers. News from these diaspora associations were reported on regularly in newspapers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, contributing to a transnational discourse.

An interesting, revealing discussion suggesting that "Scandinavian" was assumed as a potentially more political term than "Nordic" in the 1840s took place in Hamburg when a cultural-literary association was established in late 1842 by Scandinavians – predominantly Danes – as the first of its kind in the nineteenth century. The discussions reached the Scandinavian newspapers, which reported that the Swedish-Norwegian and Danish diplomatic representatives in Hamburg were informed about the new association, which had termed itself a "Scandinavian association."⁴³ This was not a problem for the Swedish diplomats. The Danish envoy, however, protested, fearing potential political reactions to the use of the term "Scandinavian," including, in particular, the potential reaction of the Russian court. As a result, the association chose the apparently more neutral term "Nordic," calling itself Nordisk Læseforening [the Nordic reading society]. The following spring, however, the original name was restored. The "Scandinavian association" in Hamburg continued until 1912 and was regularly reported on in the Scandinavian press as an example of Scandinavian sentiments and cooperation abroad. This picture changed totally, however, due to the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905, causing a renewed quarrel regarding the naming of the association after the Swedish members demonstratively left the association.

# The Scandinavian Vocabulary Turn

A third point in the history of the rhetoric of Scandinavianness is the sharp rise in the frequency of the term "Scandinavian" from the mid-1840s. This applies to

Ruth Hemstad, "Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad"; Ruth Hemstad, "Literature as Auxiliary Forces: Scandinavianism, Pan-Scandinavian Associations and Transnational Dissemination of Literature," in Culture and Conflict: Nation-building in Denmark and Scandinavia 1800– 1930, ed. Sine Krogh, Thor Mednick and Karina Lykke Grand (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2022), 161–164.

Originally referred to in Aalborg Stiftstidende og Adresse-Avis, 27 January 1843. On the association in Hamburg, see also Hemstad, "Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad."

newspapers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway – and to a certain degree in Finland – indicating the emergence of what could resemble a Nordic public sphere. There are different limitations regarding the scope and quality of the digitized material in the various Nordic newspaper corpora, especially when it comes to older printed publications, and there is still a lack of digitized journals and other printed material. The newspaper databases give, however, a clear indication of the changes in the vocabulary and of the frequencies of terms such as "Scandinavian" and "Nordic."⁴⁴

In Danish newspapers, there was a gradual rise in the use of the term "Scandinavian" since 1800, but this changed dramatically in the 1840s. From a relatively low frequency during the 1830s the frequency increased by a factor of twenty in the 1840s.⁴⁵ Almost a quarter of these mentions originates from the pro-Scandinavian newspaper Fædrelandet.⁴⁶ This is almost as many occurrences as the overall more frequent term "Nordic" in Danish newspapers during this decade.⁴⁷ After a gradual rise in the 1850s, there was another sharp rise in the use of "Scandinavian" in the 1860s.⁴⁸ From the 1870s, the gradual rise of "Scandinavian" continued, while "Nordic" again became clearly more dominant (fig. 1).

This development corresponds partly – and especially for the period between the 1830s and the 1860s – with the Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish results. The comparison also reveals an interesting difference between a dominant frequency of "Nordic" in Denmark and Finland, and a relatively more frequent use of "Scandinavian" in Sweden and Norway for the period between the 1870s and the 1890s. In Swedish newspapers, "Scandinavian" rises markedly from the 1830s to the 1840s, even surpassing the frequency of the term "Nor-

This is valid also when the frequency is measured in absolute numbers of hits/mentions (the number of hits in the newspaper databases reflects the amount of newspaper issues with mentions of "Scandinavian" or "Nordic", not the total amount of mentions in each issue put together). For the Norwegian material, relative frequency supports the findings in this study.

The frequency of the term "Scandinavian" in Danish newspapers rose from 161 mentions during the 1830s to 3,795 mentions during the 1840s. (An asterisk ["skandinavisk\*"] was added to the keyword search to ensure the inclusion of different variants. The search is case-insensitive.) Mediestream, accessed 13 September, 2020, www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream.

There were 885 mentions of "Scandinavian" in Fædrelandet during the 1840s.

The frequency of the term "Nordic" ("nordisk\*") rose from 2,046 mentions during the 1830s to 4,038 mentions during the 1840s.

There are 13,253 mentions of "Scandinavian" during the 1860s compared to 18,807 mentions of "Nordic" during the same period.

Figure 1: Frequency of the terms "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" in Danish newspapers 1810– 1899.

Source: Mediestream, accessed 13 September, 2020, www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream. Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.

dic."⁴⁹ After a gradual rise in the 1850s, the use of "Scandinavian" again rose considerably in the 1860s.⁵⁰ In the 1870s, there was a gradual rise of both terms, with "Nordic" only again slightly surpassing "Scandinavian" in the decade between 1890 and 1899 (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Frequency of the terms "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" in Swedish newspapers 1810– 1899. Source: Svenska dagstidningar, accessed 13 September 2020, tidningar.kb.se. Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.

The frequency of the term "Scandinavian" ("skandinavisk\*") in Swedish newspapers rose from 710 mentions during the 1830s to 5,967 mentions during the 1840s. The frequency of the term "Nordic" ("nordisk\*") rose from 1,718 mentions during the 1830s to 5,551 during the 1840s. (A search on "scandinavisk\*" gave 32 additional hits during the 1830s, and 83 hits during the 1840s. The search is case-insensitive). Svenska dagstidningar, accessed 13 September 2020, www.tidningar.kb.se.

There are 25,688 mentions of "Scandinavian" during the 1860s compared to 19,524 of "Nordic" during the same period. Included in this result are also advertisements for the bank Skandinaviska Kreditaktiebolaget, founded in 1864.

In the Norwegian digitized newspaper corpus, the same tendency is prevalent, even if the contemporary number of newspapers was considerably less in Norway than in the established Danish and Swedish print cultures. "Scandinavian" was used moderately in the 1830s before its usage rose significantly in the 1840s (cf. fig. 3).⁵¹ In the same period, the term "Nordic" also rose, but comparatively less.⁵² The 1850s represented a relative rise in the frequency of "Scandinavian", surpassing that of "Nordic." From the 1870s to the 1880, "Nordic" was slightly more widespread. During the 1890s, "Scandinavian" again surpassed "Nordic," but since 1900, "Nordic" has gradually become the most dominant term again.

Figure 3: Frequency of the terms "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" in Norwegian newspapers 1810–1899. Source: National Library of Norway, accessed 13 September 2020, www.nb.no. Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.

Swedish language newspapers in Finland also reflect the same development. The newspaper corpus displays an increase in the term "Scandinavian" from the 1830s to the 1840s compared to that of "Nordic".⁵³ There is a gradual increase of both terms in the 1850s and 1860s with a clear increase of "Nordic" in the 1870s and of both terms in the 1880s followed by a minor decrease of "Scandinavian" in the 1890s. The term "Nordic" is overall more frequent in this corpus during the whole period from 1810 to 1900 (fig. 4).

The frequency of the term "Scandinavian" ("skandinavisk\*") in Norwegian newspapers rose from 79 mentions during the 1830s to 1,209 mentions during the 1840s. (The search is case-insensitive). National Library of Norway, accessed 13 September 2020, www.nb.no.

The frequency of the term "Nordic" ("nordisk\*") rose from 486 mentions during the 1830s to 1,954 mentions during the 1840s.

The frequency of the term "Scandinavian" ("skandinavisk"\*/"scandinavisk\*") in Swedish language newspapers – and advertisements in Swedish in Finnish language newspapers – in Finland rose from 95 mentions during the 1830s to 227 mentions during the 1840s. The frequency of the term "Nordic" ("nordisk\*") rose from 218 mentions during the 1830s to 457 mentions during the 1840s. (The search is case-insensitive). DIGI, accessed 16 September 2020, digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi.

Figure 4: Frequency of the terms "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" in Swedish-language newspapers in Finland 1810–1899. Source: DIGI, accessed 16 September 2020, digi. kansalliskirjasto.fi. Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.

The references to "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" in Nordic newspapers in general covers editorial content, as articles and submitted letters, but also advertisements, announcements, and lists of publications, reflecting the widespread use of these terms in different contexts. During the nineteenth century "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" were increasingly used in names of journals, newspapers, firms, organizations, cultural institutions, and different enterprises of a transnational character. This tendency reflects a general transnational development and indicates that a Scandinavian/Nordic orientation had become an integrated, "ambient" part of cultural and social life across the region and could also be utilised for branding purposes.⁵⁴ Part of this picture is the rising number of meetings and associations using "Scandinavian" or "Nordic" in their names.⁵⁵

# Scandinavian Sympathies and Related Phrases

The sharp rise in the frequency of the term "Scandinavian" in Nordic newspaper corpora also reflects the range of new phrases entering the new pan-Scandinavian vocabulary. Illustrative is the critical discussion by Christian Molbech in his travel account published in 1844 where he added an almost forty-page long, highly critical appendix regarding what he called "the Scandinavian

Tim van Gerven uses the phrase "ambient Scandinavism" to describe how markers of a pan-Scandinavian identity (such as literature, monuments, and street-names) became an unobtrusive background of daily life during the late nineteenth century. Van Gerven, "Scandinavism," 264, 327.

See appendix in Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.

idea" or "the Scandinavian idea of unity."⁵⁶ The text demonstrates how the term "Scandinavian" was used in an already flourishing amount of new expressions and phrases, among them a "new Scandinavianness," a "Scandinavian connection," the "Scandinavian North," the "new Scandinavia," "the first sudden Scandinavian enthusiasm," "Scandinavian sympathies," and "the Scandinavian issue."

In Sweden, the term "Scandinavian" was redefined in the 1840s, even if, as we have seen, the previous narrower use and understanding continued alongside the new interpretation. Newspapers and journals naming themselves "Scandinavian" in the 1840s hence referred explicitly to another, larger, and future-oriented "Scandinavia" than what had hitherto been the case.⁵⁷

Along with the marked increase in the term "Scandinavian," there was a renewed interest in "Nordic" as part of the new political-cultural vocabulary. A key phrase here is Nordens Eenhed [Nordic unity/unity of the North], sometimes specified as a spiritual, cultural, or even political, unity.

Some specific phrases are used throughout the century, with periods of increasing and decreasing usage. Other phrases, interestingly, only turn up during limited time periods. Some of these word combinations are seemingly quite neutral, while others are ambiguous, charged with meaning and clearly rhetorical. It is possible to identify and analyse through a combination of close and distant readings phrases of interest, frequently used expressions, and term co-occurrences. By counting the frequencies of certain bigrams in the text corpus at the National Library of Norway and searching for key words and specific phrases in Nordic newspaper databases, as well as conducting close readings of relevant material, one can begin to see several patterns appear.⁵⁸

Several of the new phrases found in this research were coined by pan-Scandinavian activists. Some of the phrases with the term "Nordic" are integrated

Christian Molbech, "Om 'den skandinaviske Eenhed,'" in Molbech, Lund, Upsala og Stockholm, 28. Molbech's list also demonstrates a contemporary use of the term "Scandinavianness," see page 297. See also Hemstad, "Scandinavianism," 11.

"Anmälan," Tidning för Skandinavien, 30 December 1843.

Bigram collocations based on newspaper and books, 1790–1920 are made available for this study by Lars G. Johnsen. N-gram resources at the National Library of Norway: https:// www.nb.no/sprakbanken/ressurskatalog/oai-nb-no-sbr-35/. For descriptions of data resources at NBdigital, see Magnus Breder Birkenes et al., "From Digital Library to N-Grams: NB Ngram," in Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics (Linköping, 2015), 293–295. See also Lars Johnsen, "Eldre bøker i den digitale samlingen: Et elektronisk blikk på tekster fra perioden 1650–1850," in Litterære verdensborgere: Transnasjonale perspektiver på norsk bokhistorie 1519–1850, ed. Aasta Marie Bjorvand Bjørkøy et al. (Oslo: National Library of Norway, 2019), 190–214.

parts of the pan-Scandinavian rhetoric, having clear political implications and connotations, such as "Nordic unity," "Nordic spirit/volksgeist," and "Nordic union/federation/alliance." More frequent in the rhetoric applied by the pan-Scandinavian movement, and used mainly from the 1840s until the 1860s, were phrases such as "Scandinavian sympathies"; the "Scandinavian idea" or the "Scandinavian idea of unity"; the "Scandinavian issue/question"; the "Scandinavian union"; and "Scandinavian efforts/endeavours." Other frequent phrases are the "Scandinavian people(s)," "Scandinavian nation(s)/nationality," and "Scandinavian aims/purposes." Widespread are also phrases including "Norden" or "Scandinavia," as the "Scandinavian North," the "spiritual unity of the North," "Our Norden/Scandinavia," and "the unity of Norden/Scandinavia." Even "Scandinavian associations," as we have seen, could be understood as a specific form of association, meant to propagate "Scandinavian ideas" and promote the knowledge of "Scandinavian literature." Many of these phrases were used in all three Scandinavian countries, as a transnational pan-Scandinavian vocabulary with shared key concepts, others were mainly used in one or two countries, like the "Scandinavian fatherland," which was mostly a Danish invention. All these phrases should be seen as part of the discursive, semantic context surrounding the pan-Scandinavian movement.

"Nordic" and "Scandinavian" were to a certain extent interchangeable concepts during most of the nineteenth century, which the bigram counts also support. In many instances, and out of esthetical-poetical reasons, there was a question of using alternatives in the descriptions used. The term "Nordic" is overall clearly more dominant during the whole century, but "Scandinavian" increased to a certain point in Denmark in the 1860s and early 1870s, and in Norway and Sweden until the 1890s, followed by a relative decline. Some phrases were usually, or only, used in combination with either "Nordic" or "Scandinavian." Typically, descriptive phrases of the area and territory used these terms interchangeably, for example: "Scandinavian/Nordic countries," "Scandinavian/Nordic Kingdoms/realms," and "Scandinavian/Nordic states" – an exception to this tendency is the description of the peninsula, "Scandinavian Peninsula" predominates with only a few, mainly Norwegian, examples of the phrase "Nordic Peninsula." Phrases that refer to the inhabitants of territory follow the same logic: "Scandinavian/Nordic peoples" and "Scandinavian/Nordic nationalities/nations". Some of these terms could also be used in singular, rhetorically underlining the unity among the Scandinavians, such as "the Scandinavian people/nationality/nation". Some phrases changed gradually from "Scandinavian" to "Nordic" during the century, such as "Scandinavian/Nordic cooperation," and related to this, "Scandinavian/Nordic meetings/associations".

Some phrases could change their meaning, depending on the context, as part of a Swedish or a Danish rhetoric. The "Scandinavian union" could mean Sweden and Norway or Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the inhabitants in question – the "Scandinavians" – could mean the Swedish and Norwegian people or the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian people or even, more explicitly, the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian supporters of the "Scandinavian idea." A "Scandinavian song" could be praising the union between Sweden and Norway, especially when written around 1814 or it could, later on, be one of the hundreds of songs distributed during the "Scandinavian/Nordic student meetings."

Some phrases are predominantly "Nordic," like the ones describing Old Norse heritage.⁵⁹ Old Norse history, language, and antiquities were dominantly termed "Nordic," not "Scandinavian." In the Sagas themselves, "Scandinavian" was not used, as was emphasized in the Norwegian critique against Danish attempts to claim part of the ownership to this heritage. "Nordic" was preferred as well when speaking of Vikings, pagans, Gods and runes, as well as tribes. History was also dominantly "Nordic." There are "Nordic mythology/legends," as well as "Nordic folk songs/fairy-tales/poetry/art/authors," but "literature" could either be described as "Scandinavian" or "Nordic." And although countries, states, and realms are interchangeably "Nordic" or "Scandinavian," there are seemingly only "Nordic powers" and a "Nordic force."

The rhetoric of Scandinavianness around 1840 was soon met by counter concepts clearly indicating the ambiguity embedded in these concepts. One of these, although quite rare, was "Unscandinavian." Another, more frequently used, was "antiscandinavian." There were also "antiscandinavians," referring negatively to "Scandinavians," or "so-called Scandinavians," referring to someone who was in favour of the "Scandinavian idea." "Unscandinavian" was used in an article in the Danish satirical and political magazine, Corsaren, while mocking the incredible number of speeches and toasts being held at the huge "Nordic" student meeting in Copenhagen during the summer of 1845. The author claims there were "247 Scandinavian speeches… always about one and the same thing, that Denmark, Norway and Sweden had been in disagreement, but now were the best of friends – that is simply too much… that is unscandinavian."⁶⁰

See also J.J.A. Worsaae, "Om vigtigheden af et centrum for Nordisk Oldforskning," Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 1846: 3–20. In Sweden, "Scandinavian" was also used to describe this past history. "Nordic race" is, however, seemingly not commonly used (on humans) until the 1920s. See also Merle Weßel in this volume.

Corsaren, 4 July 1845, cited after Julius Clausen, Skandinavismen historisk fremstillet (Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Forlag, 1900), 101. Corsaren was edited by M.A. Goldschmidt.

The development in the rhetorical use of "Scandinavian" in the 1840s cannot be understood without considering the impact of the pan-Scandinavian movement. The usage culminated with the two German-Danish wars on the Duchy of Schleswig, 1848–51 and 1864, resulting in the Danish loss of Schleswig. During the 1870s, the 1880s, and most of the 1890s the rhetoric of Scandinavianness was less outspoken, but still not completely forgotten.

# From the Rhetoric of Scandinavianness to the Rhetoric of Nordicness

A fourth point regarding the rhetoric of Scandinavianness in the nineteenth century is the renewed interest at the turn of the century followed by a rejection of these concepts in conservative parts of the Swedish public sphere. This development probably contributed to strengthening another tendency, which is the final main point, namely, that the rhetoric of Scandinavianness gradually transformed into a rhetoric of Nordicness from the last part of the nineteenth century onwards. This last section will briefly look into this development.

The period of specific interest is around the year 1900, which saw a revival of pan-Scandinavian sentiments stimulated by what was termed "neo-Scandinavianism."⁶¹ A range of "Scandinavian" and "Nordic" associations and meetings filled the air, many of them using a rhetoric reminiscent of earlier periods. This Indian summer period, also reflecting Russian and German pressure against Finland and the Danish borderlands respectively, turned, however, into a cold Nordic winter after the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905. Swedish "neo-Scandinavianists" openly declared the final death of "Scandinavianism" caused by Norway unilaterally leaving the union. Swedish reactions hence turned against the flourishing Nordic cooperation at the time, including the many Scandinavian associations established abroad, such as the one in Hamburg. The terms "Scandinavia" and "Scandinavian" were no longer appealing but rather contested and were rejected as inappropriate and in conflict with Swedish national interests in conservative parts of the Swedish public sphere.⁶²

The pan-Scandinavian associations abroad, usually termed "Scandinavian," not "Nordic," continued to celebrate "Scandinavian" culture, traditions, and spirit, along with "Nordic Christmas" and "Scandinavian friendship" until the dis-

Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 87–229.

"De 'skandinaviska' sjömanshemmen utomlands," Göteborgs Aftonblad, 17 July, 1908.

solution of the union in 1905. In 1906 and 1907, following the dissolution, and the subsequent anti-Scandinavian sentiments in Sweden, many associations, especially in European cities, were terminated.⁶³ The Scandinavian Association in Rome, established 1860, was one of the few older associations to survive 1905, and it is still in operation today.

An encyclopaedic entry in the Swedish Nordisk Familjebok – not an untypical name at the time – illuminates the conceptual changes within this field. The entry for "Scandinavian associations abroad" was still included in the 1917 volume, but without any definition, only a reference to another entry: "see Swedes living abroad."⁶⁴ Utlandssvenskar was then defined as "Swedish speaking citizens of Swedish origin" (including former Swedish territories), living in a state other than Sweden.⁶⁵ Several of the pan-Scandinavian associations abroad had been dissolved and new, nation-based clubs were established instead, backed by national umbrella organizations in the home countries.

The naming of transnational meetings within Scandinavia illustrates the transformation from "Scandinavian" to "Nordic" during the last part of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the first meeting series, that started in 1839, and in the decades following, associations and meetings across the region were termed "Scandinavian." During the 1860s, new meetings were either called "Scandinavian" or "Nordic." Starting with the 1870s, however, new meetings and conferences were primarily called "Nordic" rather than "Scandinavian," in part reflecting a growing number of Finnish participants. After 1900, there are only rare exceptions still using the adjective "Scandinavian" for these kinds of transnational activities.⁶⁶

The same pattern can be seen in the names of the pan-Scandinavian oriented networks of associations. Within Scandinavia, associations with pan-Scandinavian ambitions, although nationally based, were established in three different, short-lived rows during the nineteenth century. The naming of them changed over time following the main transformation from "Scandinavian" to "Nordic." A forerunner was the above-mentioned Scandinavian Literary Society, established in 1796. During the 1840s, the associations were, as we have seen, termed "Scandinavian." When new associations were established after the second Ger-

Hemstad, "Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad"; Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 345– 359.

"Skandinaviska föreningar i utlandet: Se Utlandssvenskar," Nordisk Familjebok 25, 2nd ed. (Stockholm, 1917), 876.

Nordisk Familjebok 31 (Stockholm, 1921), 111.

Among the exceptions are "Scandinavian Labour Congresses," "Scandinavian Dentists Meetings," and "Scandinavian Woman Conferences". See appendix in Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.

man-Danish war in 1864, they were termed "Nordic" in Sweden and Denmark. The first association of this kind in Norway, established during the war, termed itself however "Scandinavian" [Skandinavisk Selskab]. As part of the revival of pan-Scandinavian notions after 1899, new associations were founded, using a common name: Nordisk Forening [Nordic association]. After a period of reduced cooperation and contact after 1905, the First World War reactivated Nordic cooperation, meetings, and transnational associational life. Foreningene Norden [Norden associations] were established not only in the Scandinavian countries in 1919, but also in Iceland in 1922, in Finland in 1924, and later in the Baltic area. They proved to have a longer life than their predecessors did. They have represented, and still represent, an enduring rhetoric of Nordicness.

# Conclusion

This chapter has explored the emergence, rise, and decline of the term "Scandinavian" as a flexible and contested concept in newspapers published in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland in the long nineteenth century. Based on an approach combining close and distant reading, through key word and collocate searching of Nordic newspapers, and additional readings of journals, books, and pamphlets, it argues that the use of the term "Scandinavian," along with a revived use of the older and more common term "Nordic," increased rapidly in the Nordic countries in the 1840s. The study demonstrates how different groups have sought to claim the term "Scandinavian" for their own purposes, leading to rhetorical struggles. A rhetoric of Scandinavianness – utilising the relatively rare and unsettled term "Scandinavian" compared to that of "Nordic" around 1800 – was used in competing Swedish and Danish pan-national projects. The use of the term "Scandinavian" exploded within the new Scandinavian public sphere that emerged in the 1840s, with associations, journals, and newspapers promoting the "Scandinavian idea." New connotations were attached to established terms, and a range of conceptual innovations with rhetorical power led to conceptual contests and disputes.

While the Swedish interpretation of "Scandinavia" and "Scandinavian" – as restricted to the Scandinavian Peninsula – used in the decades following 1814 has more or less faded into oblivion, the pan-Scandinavian movement of the mid-nineteenth century, it may be argued, had an enduring influence on the contested rhetoric of Scandinavianness and Nordicness throughout the century – and well beyond.⁶⁷ The re-politicization of this concept around 1900 –1905, and the national tensions and anti-Scandinavian sentiments after 1905, contributed to making it even more contested. When the transnational cooperation started up again around 1918, and with Finland and Iceland as integrated parts of it, the term "Nordic" was the most appropriate adjective to use, although it continued to be flexible, appealing, and contested, as the following chapters of this volume demonstrate.

Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 394–418; Hemstad, "Scandinavianism, Nordic Co-operation and 'Nordic Democracy,'" in Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010), 179–193.

Merle Weßel

# The Nordic in the Scientific Racial Discourses in the United States and Northern Europe in the Interwar Period: The Passing of Greatness

### Introduction

The term Nordic in relation to race science was introduced in the early twentieth century in the United States by Madison Grant. Though the notion of the supremacy of the races of Northern Europe was frequently discussed in the nineteenth century, the prominent terms in this discussion were Aryan or Teutonic, rather than Nordic. The shift from Aryan to Nordic was a gradual one. Between 1853 and 1855, the term Aryan race was first used by the French author Arthur de Gobineau to describe what he regarded as the superior race of Northern Europe.¹ In 1899, the economist William Ripley introduced the term Teutonic race, which, according to him, was based mainly in the United States, Great Britain and Germany.² He did not specifically consider Scandinavia in his definition.

Madison Grant then introduced the term Nordic and put the Nordic countries – or to be more precise, Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) – on the racial map as the core of civilisation and political order.³ In the young historian and journalist Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950) Grant found a protégée who continued his legacy of scientific racism well into the 1930s with books like The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1922) and The Racial Realities in Europe (1924).⁴ Both were convinced that the Nordic race was superior and the most civilised of all races, the race that led any great nation to success. They argued that only with a high degree of Nordic blood could a society be politically,

Arthur de Gobineau, Essai Sur l'inégalité Des Races Humaines, 3 vols (Hanover: Rumpler, 1853).

William Zebina Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899).

John P. Jackson and Nadine M. Weidman, "The Origins of Scientific Racism," The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 50 (2005): 66–79.

Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (New York: Scribner, 1920); Lothrop Stoddard, The Racial Realities in Europe (New York: Scribner, 1924).

OpenAccess. © 2022 Merle Weßel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-004

economically, and socially successful. If the degree of Nordic blood decreased in a society, civilisation would likewise decline.⁵

This terminological shift was connected to an interplay of scientific and political changes. The increasing interest of racial scientists and anthropologists in the understanding of human races was related to the political climate in the United States This was influenced by fears of poorer European immigrants seeking their fortunes in the new world and the impact of this on US society.⁶ There was a consolidation of racial discourse in science especially after the turn of the century, and after the Great War this discourse found its way into politics and society. This discussion peaked in the Immigration Act of 1924, which regulated immigration to the United States on racial grounds. The Act favoured people from Northern Europe and prevented Southern and Eastern Europeans from entering the United States.⁷

However, the idea of a superior Nordic race found support not only in the United States but also in many Northern European countries. In Germany, for example, leading racial scientists like Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, and Hans F.K. Günther discussed notions of a superior nordische Rasse and its possible decline through race mixing.⁸ In the Nordic countries, racial biologists, such as the Swede Herman Lundborg, adopted the term nordisk in their race studies in the early twentieth century, though its use did not originate there. The adoption of Nordic terminology in the Nordic countries followed a pattern familiar from other usages of the rhetorics of Nordicness – it was largely an adoption of US uses.⁹

The term "Nordic" [nordisch/nordisk] was the key term in racial science and the conceptualization of racial superiority and hierarchy in early twentieth-century Germany and Sweden. In Germany, the racial theorists Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz published their book Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und

Allerfeldt, "'And We Got Here First."'

Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History (New York: C. Scribner, 1936); Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington: University Press of New England, 2009).

Kristofer Allerfeldt, '"And We Got Here First": Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s," Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 1 (January 2010): 7–26, doi:10.1177/0022009409348019.

Hans F.K. Günter, Ritter, Tod und Teufel. Der heldische Gedanke (Munich: J. F. Lehmann Verlag, 1920); Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene (München: J.F. Lehmann, 1931), 547.

Carl Marklund and Klaus Petersen, "Return to Sender – American Images of the Nordic Welfare States and Nordic Welfare State Branding," European Journal of Scandinavian Studies 43, no. 2 (January 2013), https://doi.org/10.1515/ejss-2013–0016.

Rassenhygiene (1921/1931) in which they claimed that the members of the nordische Rasse were the bravest and most intelligent.¹⁰ Here nordisch refers to a geographical area occupied mainly by people of the nordische Rasse – Northern Europe, Northwest Europe, and the coastal areas of the North and Baltic seas.¹¹ These theorists declared the term germanisch to be a term of the past, used because the nordische Rasse had its origin in the German Kaiserreich of the Middle Ages and had developed from there.¹² The term Aryan, as used by Ripley in 1899, was for them a purely linguistic term that did not relate to the cultural context.¹³ While the German racial scientists saw the origin of the Nordic race in Germany, the Swedish researchers, such as the racial biologist Herman Lundborg, understood Sweden as the geographical centre of the nordisk ras. He, as with Grant and the German colleagues, used the term nordisk to refer to a geographical location its inhabitants. Yet, he argued that the nordisk ras was mainly defined by an anthropological bond and that no racial hierarchies could be detected between the Nordic race and other European races.¹⁴ The different conceptualisation and nationally defined use of the terms Nordic, nordisch, and nordisk had an effect on the racial implications made by the different researchers as well as the racialist results of their research.

This chapter discusses Grant and Stoddard's conceptualisation of the Nordic race as a superior race. The primary question is: how did Grant and Stoddard form the notion of Nordicness in their racial theory? Why did Grant and Stoddard use the term Nordic rather than following William Ripley's conceptualisation of the Teutonic or Germanic race?¹⁵ Since the discourse of the Nordic race was not limited to the United States but similar ideas emerged at the same time in Europe, I compare how the concept of Nordicness and Nordic race can be understood in the context of similar ideas, taking Sweden and Germany as case studies. I chose Sweden as the exemplary case for the Nordic countries because in Nordic racial theory the Nordic countries constituted the core area of the Nordic race with the "purest" Nordic people. Yet, though the Nordic race discourse was very active in Sweden in the interwar period, no political radicalisation resulted from it. As the second case, I selected Germany because German racial theorists considered Germany to be a country with a significant number of Nordic people

Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 547.

Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 147.

Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 541.

Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 542.

Herman Lundborg, The racial Characters of the Swedish Nation (Uppsala: Almquist & Wik-

sell, 1926); Herman Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes (Jena: Fischer, 1928).

Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study.

and the idea of Nordic superiority was politically radicalised in the 1930s. I show how the geographical and political environment shaped the concept of the Nordic race, despite the cross-national similarities of the discourse. Here, notions of a transnational transfer of culture and knowledge are relevant to demonstrate how the knowledge and understanding of the concept of the Nordic race travelled across the Atlantic Ocean and within Europe in the early twentieth century.¹⁶

In 2011, Johannes Burgers compared Grant's racial theory to the theories of Hungarian Zionist Max Nordau.¹⁷ I build on this comparative literature. The emphasis here is not on Grant's biography, rather it is on Grant's conceptualization of the Nordic race and his contribution to the development of a movement proclaiming Nordic and White supremacy in the United States during the 1920s.

Many thinkers engaged in discussions about the concept of a Nordic race in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In what follows, I draw on studies of these debates by Nikola Karcher, Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, and Gunnar Broberg with Nils Roll-Hansen, as well as my own work, and for the Swedish context, on studies by Mattias Tydén and Maria Björkman to show the similarities and differences between the Northern European and US Nordic discourse.¹⁸

The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the development of scientific racism and the conceptualization of the Nordic race as a superior race in the United States, with a particular focus on the works of Grant and Stoddard. I show why Grant and Stoddard favoured the term Nordic over the previous terms Germanic or Teutonic and how this conceptual turn took place. In the second part, I place the US discourse in relation to similar discourses in Germany and Sweden. I show that despite common fears about the degeneration of the

Stefan Nygård and Johan Strang, "Facing Asymmetry: Nordic Intellectuals and Center-Periphery Dynamics in European Cultural Space," Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 1 (25 February 2016): 75–97, doi:10.1353/jhi.2016.0006.

Johannes Hendrikus Burgers, :Max Nordau, Madison Grant, and Racialized Theories of Ideology," Journal of the History of Ideas 72, no. 1 (2011): 119–140.

Maria Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen: Nils von Hofsten, eugeniken och steriliseringarna 1909–1963, Pandora-serien xviii (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 2011); Gunnar Broberg, "Scandinavia: An Introduction," in Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, ed. Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005), 1–8; Nicola Karcher, "Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung: Der Nordische Ring und seine Repräsentanten in Norwegen," Nordeuropaforum 1, no. 19 (13 July 2009): 7–36, doi:10.18452/7996; Mattias Tydén, Från politik till praktik: de svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935–1975, 2nd ed., Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm studies in history 63 (Stockholm: Södertälje, 2002); Merle Weßel, "Concept of 'Nordic Race' in German and Nordic Racial-Theoretical Research in the 1920s," Nordeuropaforum, 2016, 29–49; Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–1940 (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1971).

Nordic race and the impact of this on civilisation, the conceptualisation of the Nordic race differed, geographically and conceptually, across the Atlantic Ocean. In the third part, I focus on the transnational transfer of knowledge and discourse about the Nordic race. I discuss whether this undertaking can be considered a transnational movement in the rhetorical uses of Nordicness and what aims and effects were connected within the different strains. I show that Germany was a centre for research about the Nordic race, since Grant and Lundborg had extensive connections to German race scientists although no direct link between Grant and Lundborg themselves can be detected.

### Scientific Racism in the United States

The idea of a hierarchy of human races was not invented by Grant or Stoddard. Charles Darwin argued in his evolutionary theory that no race was superior to the others. In the decades after the publication of his work, however, the French writer Arthur de Gobineau, the American economist William Ripley, and the British philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer, among others, contributed to the idea that evolution was indeed the struggle between the races. This thinking grew into the ideology of scientific racism.

Whereas Darwin argued against the supremacy of the Northern races and argued that environment had no effect on genes, de Gobineau argued that in Northern parts of Europe there developed a superior race due to its context of a harsh climate. They suggested that civilisation was a product of race and that the Nordic race produced the highest form of civilisation. They also argued that race, not nation or political order, was the foundation for social order.¹⁹ While the late nineteenth-century, racial theorists, such as William Ripley, had focused mainly on anthropological issues in the context of race, racial theorists such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard introduced social and political ideas into the discussion. In this way, they turned racial discourse away from anthropology and biology and towards social and political discourse.

Grant was born in 1865 into a wealthy, upper-class family in New York. He studied at Yale University as an undergraduate and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1890. Yet, his legal career was short-lived as he pursued his interests in zoology, genealogy, and anthropology.²⁰ Grant developed a spe-

Jackson and Weidman, "The Origins of Scientific Racism," 66.

Charles C. Alexander, "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth," Phylon (1960‐) 23, no. 1 (1962): 73–74, doi:10.2307/274146.

cial interest in the conservation of American wildlife. He was member of the prestigious Boone and Crocket Club, a conservation and hunting club with other prominent members, such as future president Theodore Roosevelt. He shaped various other nature-focused associations, like the National Parks Association and the New York Zoological Society, and he was a founder of the Bronx Zoo in New York in 1899.²¹ Furthermore, he was vice-president of the Immigration Restriction League and member of the Eugenics Research Association. His ideas influenced the drafting of the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924, which regulated immigration to the United States on racial grounds.²² On top of this, Grant published numerous articles about wildlife conservation, nature, and anthropology, as well as the danger of the downfall of civilisation in Europe and its threat to society in the United States. He was a strong advocate for eugenics and placed himself in the popular discourse about degeneration and the decline of civilisation.²³

Grant created a group of followers during his active years. One of his most vocal protégées was the journalist and historian Lothrop Stoddard. In his biography of Grant, Jonathan Spiro calls Stoddard the second most influential racist of the United States.²⁴ His background was similar to Grant's. Stoddard came from an old and wealthy New England family and he also trained, like Grant, as a lawyer but never actually practised law. He studied history at Harvard University and worked as a journalist and an author. Stoddard was considered the apostle of Grant, who was considered the prophet of scientific racism.²⁵ He published 22 books and numerous articles, the most significant of which were The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1920), The Revolt against Civilisation (1922) and The Racial Realities in Europe (1924).²⁶ The central theme, following Grant, was the supremacy of the Nordic race, its contribution to civilisation and its feared downfall in the near future. Stoddard was well known in intellectual circles and influenced the intellectuals and authors of his time. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald alluded to Stoddard and his works in his book The Great Gatsby (1925), where his character Tom Buchanan refers to a book on the subject.

Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 75.

Alexander, "Prophet of American Racism," 75.

Alexander, "Prophet of American Racism," 89.

Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 171.

Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 173.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy; Lothrop Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the under Man (New York: Scribner, 1922); Lothrop Stoddard, The Racial Realities in Europe.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently.  Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard? […] It's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved. […] This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things. […] This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and […] we've produced all the things that go to make civilization – oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?"²⁷

The casual allusion to Stoddard's book and the topic of the presumed downfall of civilisation in a popular novel show that scientific ideas about race were not marginalised but that the discourse about races and civilisation was very much part of intellectual discussions. Books by Stoddard and others were widely read and became so well known that they appeared in literature as part of the zeitgeist.

However, the careers of both Grant and Stoddard were short lived, peaking in the time after the Great War in the 1920s. Yet both left behind extensive material that enlightens us about the conceptualisation of the Nordic race in the United States in the interwar period. Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916/ 1936) was dedicated to the history of the Nordic race and its achievements, but also prophesied its downfall in the next decades. In the preface to the second edition, the US-anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn stated that recent history had shown that the Nordic race was the race that countries needed to rely on for leadership.²⁸ In the preface to the first edition Osborn stated: "if I were asked: What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic today? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character."²⁹ The strong interest in the Nordic race and Nordic supremacy started shortly before the Great War and increased significantly in the interwar period. The political and social changes that came with the experience of the war, not only in the United States but also in Germany, were shaped by a sense of loss of the world as it had been known and the subsequent uncertainty of the future.

Grant emphasised repeatedly in his works that he objected to the classification of some races as superior to others, but at the same time he contradicted his statement by declaring that the human races were not equal and alike.³⁰ In his

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, xi.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, ix.

Madison Grant, The Conquest of the Continent (New York: C. Scribner, 1933), ix.

books, he discussed the races of the world and especially the three races he defined as European races: the Nordic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean. Here my focus is on the conceptualization of the Nordic race. Grant's description of the physical characteristics of the Nordic race was no different to descriptions by other international racial theorists, such as Fischer, Lenz, or Lundborg. The members of the Nordic race were long-skulled with fair skin, blond or brown hair, and light-coloured eyes. He described them as "a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers and aristocrats in sharp contrast of the essentially peasant and democratic character of the Alpines. The Nordic race is domineering, individualistic, self-reliant and jealous of their personal freedom both in political and religious systems and as a result they are usually Protestant."³¹

Grant argued that the superiority of the Nordic race was defined by its environment. He demarcated the core area of the Nordic race as the areas surrounding the North and Baltic seas, though this area was not fixed but changed over time.³² He supported the neo-Malthusian notion that the environment influenced genes and that genes changed due to environmental circumstances over time and generations. Grant argued that the harsh living conditions of the North – the long winters, the lack of daylight, and the bad weather – had a positive influence on people of the Nordic race, even though the weather was endured rather than enjoyed.³³ The fair environment of Southern Europe where the Mediterranean race was dominant did not force the people to strive for survival. Grant stated that good weather made people mentally and physically weak.³⁴

Grant created a complex network of the human race structure. On top were the three main species: the Caucasians, the Mongols, and the "Negroids". Secondly, he divided them into subspecies or races. The Caucasians, for example, were divided into Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean – the three European races. Thirdly, Grant introduced varieties. Here, the Nordic race was split into Teutonics, Scandinavians, and other varieties based on the region they inhabited. The Teutonics, for example, were based in Great Britain and Northern Germany, and the Scandinavians in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the coastal area of Finland.³⁵ Sweden was considered by Grant the core area of the Nordic race, where the purest types could be found. In Germany or Great Britain, the Nordic

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 228.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 20.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 38.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 38–39.

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 65–66; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 96.

race mixed with other races but the high percentage of Nordic blood within the people ensured their high quality.³⁶

Stoddard echoed in many ways the thoughts of his mentor Grant and contributed little new to racial theories of the early twentieth century. He also divided European races into Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. He located the areas of settlement the same way Grant did and followed Grant and most other racial theorists of his time in the physical description of the Nordic race.³⁷ Stoddard argued that the terms Aryan, Indo-European, and Germanic were to be considered purely linguistic. Only Nordic could be considered a term that defined the racial uniqueness and superiority of the group of people living in Northern Europe and belonging to the Nordic race, according to Stoddard.³⁸ Here Ripley's terminology of the Teutonic race clearly shifts to Grant and Stoddard's Nordic race.

The term Caucasian, according to Grant, was used to distinguish White from Black people in the United States but could not be used in other contexts.³⁹ Teutonic, as Grant claimed, was also a linguistic term that distinguished the latecomers of the Nordic race from the early Celtic-speaking Nordic tribes.⁴⁰ Grant and Stoddard agreed that all other terms previously used to describe the Nordic race, such as Aryan, Germanic, or Teutonic, actually referred to linguistic differences but not to racial differences – physical and mental traits. Grant stated:

Just as the classification of man according to race needs revision in the light of recent discoveries, so the definition of race must be understood anew in the light of genetics. Thirty years ago, we talked glibly about the Aryan or Indo-European race, or the Caucasian or Germanic race. All these terms must be discarded. Aryan, Indo-European, and Germanic are only linguistic terms and Caucasian has no meaning except as used in America to distinguish between whites and colored. ⁴¹

Yet, Stoddard started to use the term "White race," which comprised the Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean races. Grant was not convinced at this time that these three races could be grouped together but Stoddard considered them all to be races of "good" stock and genetically at least above the "colored races" [sic]. Nevertheless, Stoddard agreed with Grant that the Nordic race was the most val-

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 68, 169, 211.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 5–7.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 162.

Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 21–22.

Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 43.

Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 21–22.

uable one.⁴² While people from the Nordic countries had not previously been considered White, Stoddard connected Nordicness to Whiteness.⁴³

The fear for the future of the Nordic race was a central theme for Stoddard. Whereas Grant had already anticipated a grim future for the Nordic race, Stoddard argued that "it is the Nordics who are most affected by the dysgenic [sic] aspects of our civilization."⁴⁴ He gave two examples of the decline of the Nordic race. With the first he directed the view to the United States. Stoddard argued that "our country, originally settled almost exclusively by Nordics, was toward the close of the nineteenth century invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and Jews."⁴⁵ Stoddard refers to "Nordics" here because in his mind the first settlers in America came exclusively from countries with a high concentration of the Nordic bloodline, such as Great Britain, parts of Germany, and Sweden. He continued: "as a result, the Nordic native American has been crowded out with amazing rapidity by these swarming, prolific aliens, and after two short generations he has in many of our urban areas become almost extinct."⁴⁶ He drew a direct line between rising social and economic problems in the United States after the turn of the century and the geographical change in the migration structures he appeared to have recognized.

According to Stoddard, following Grant's argument, the Nordic race was endangered not only in the United States but also in Europe, its area of origin. He claimed that it was mainly the Nordic race that had suffered during the Great War: "the Nordic went forth eagerly to battle, while the more stolid Alpine and, above all, the little brunet Mediterranean either stayed at home or even when at the front showed less fighting spirit, took fewer chances, and oftener saved their skins."⁴⁷ The Great War thus weakened White solidarity, which have previously been a unifying force.⁴⁸ Stoddard's line of logic was that in the Great War the White races fought each other and other races were less involved, which meant that mainly members of the White races, in particular

Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 157; Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 162–63.

Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, "Nordic Whiteness: An Introduction," Scandinavian Studies 89, no. 2 (2017): 151, doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0151.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 163.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 165.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 165.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 183.

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 169.

the Nordic race, lost their lives in the war. According to him this affected not only the current generation but also the future ones.⁴⁹

Grant and Stoddard's scientific racism was based on their experiences of change in American culture after the turn of the century and the Great War. They perceivedadegeneration of the society and as a result felt that the world they knew was changing. Their concerns about an increase in low quality immigrants – as they perceived them – triggered their interest in race mixtures and trying to preserve the status quo.

Grant and Stoddard, as wealthy, educated men of their time with a strong belief in science, used scientific argumentation to support non-scientific claims regarding hierarchies of human races as determinate of historical developments. It is significant how much influence amateur scientists like Grant and Stoddard could gain in politics and the scientific community. They were even able to influence legislation, for instance, the development of the Johnson Act in 1924. The Nordic race and being Nordic became a main identity marker for these men. They used it to proclaim their superior position in society and ensure the preservation of their power in the United States.

### Nordisk Ras in Sweden Racial Theory

Enthusiasts for the Nordic race and racial scientists spanned across the Western world, creating an informal network.⁵⁰ In the early twentieth century, the Nordic race concept was popular in most Western countries. It was frequently used to define hierarchies of people, especially to make distinctions between native inhabitants of a nation and immigrants. The discourse, however, was not the same on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, as we have seen in the previous section, the focus was to protect the nation from immigrants arriving from Europe, in particular Southern Europe, and changing the societal and racial map of the United States. In Europe the discussion was different. The decline of the population quality and the fear of racial degeneration constituted the core of the discourse, but in Sweden, it was not immigration but emigration

Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 169, 198.

Maria Björkman and Sven Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics: The Case of Sweden," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 64, no. 4 (20 December 2010): 379–400, https://doi.org/10.1098/ rsnr.2010.0009.

that was the main concern.⁵¹ In the interwar period in Sweden, racial biologists raised concerns that people of a so-called "high-quality" racial make-up would emigrate, and that so-called "degenerate" people would stay behind.⁵²

Racial research in Sweden was less directed toward external influence and instead was concerned with the internal race structure of the Swedish nation. The Swedish racial biologist and leader of the state institute for racial biology Herman Lundborg published several books analysing the racial characters of the Swedish nation.⁵³ In his more general publications on a theory of race, such as Rasfrågor i modern belysning (1919) and Rasbiologi och rashygien: Nutida kultur- och rasfrågor i etisk belysning (1922), his focus was primarily on Northern Europe and he did not take the global approach as Grant and Stoddard did.⁵⁴ However, like his US colleagues, Lundborg argued that nations consist of race mixtures. For example, the German nation had traces of the nordisk ras but also others. The nordisk ras, according to Lundborg, could be found in most races, but in a lower quantity.⁵⁵ Lundborg also highlighted the difference between the terms race and folk, which had an influence on the use of the word Nordic in his work. He argued that a folk was a group of people joined by culture and race constituted a group of people with shared physical and mental characteristics that were inherited.⁵⁶ For example, the German folk included the Nordic race as well as other races and the Nordic race could also be found among Roman or Slavic folk.⁵⁷ He argued that every folk was actually a mixture of races and never exclusively consisted of one race, but the quantity of nordisk traces in a folk defined its quality.⁵⁸ The term nordisk did not itself have a racist connotation in Lundborg's racial theory; it was a descriptive term, which did not say much about the quality of the race or create strict hierarchies between races, as in US or German racial research. He was much vaguer in his publications,

Hofsten, Nils von, Ärftlighetslära (Uppsala: P.A. Norstedt & Söner, 1919); Herman Lundborg, Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1919); Broberg, "Scandinavia: An Introduction."

Hofsten, Nils von, Ärftlighetslära, 490; Lundborg, Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning, 126; Broberg, "Scandinavia: An Introduction," 3–4.

Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Tydén, Från politik till praktik; Maja Hagerman, Käraste Herman: Rasbiologen Herman Lundborgs gåta (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2015).

Herman Lundborg, Rasbiologi Och Rashygien: Nutida Kultur-Och Rasfrågor i Etisk Belysning (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1922); Lundborg, Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning.

Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.

Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.

Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.

Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 119.

though more precise about his racist ideas in private.⁵⁹ Since he published his research in German, Swedish, and English, it cannot be clearly stated how the term nordisk might differ from Nordic and nordisch in regard to his American and German colleagues. However, it can be stated that Lundborg used nordisk not as a cultural or political term, like Grant did, but as a biological one.

In the context of neo-Malthusian ideas of genetic heritage, Lundborg argued that although the environment influenced physical development – such as body size – not all differences in physical appearances could be related to the environment, as many were attributable to racial differences.⁶⁰ In many ways Lundborg shared Grant's ideas on the influence of the environment on the racial constitution but he indicated a certain conceptual uncertainty about how the environment exactly influenced the development of genes. This may have been due to his scientific education as a biologist, which gave him a deeper understanding of genetics. Since Lundborg was a biologist focusing on Sweden, his research on the nordisk ras was strongly influenced by his academic background and by his own studies of the races in Sweden that he mapped extensively in the early twentieth century. Direct contact between Grant and Lundborg has not been found. Lundborg's main contacts in the United States were with more established and professional racial scientists, such as Charles Davenport, the leader of the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Record Office, and not with amateur scientists like Grant.

Though Lundborg did not have a direct connection with Grant, he had very direct connections with Grant's German colleagues Lenz, Baur, and Fischer as well as racial theorist Hans F.K. Günther who played a leading role in National Socialist racial theory.⁶¹ Günther lived in Sweden in the 1920s and lectured at Lundborg's institute.⁶² The Swedish Racial Biology Institute was modelled after the German Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.⁶³ Lundborg is described as a radical conservatist who helped introduce German racial theory to Sweden.⁶⁴ Although his research was influenced by the idea in radical German racial theory that the Nordic race sits at the top of a racial hierarchy, it was also influenced by theories from scholars in the Nordic region. In that sense, nordisk had a double meaning in race science in Sweden. It constituted the research subject but also the context in which the research took place. Nordic scholars cooperated in their efforts in

Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.

Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Hagerman, Käraste Herman.

Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

racial research and shared their ideas in meetings and conferences within a closed network.⁶⁵

# Grant and Stoddard's Connections to Germany

Grant did have extensive and direct contacts to German racial theorists, especially to Eugen Fischer, the German medical doctor, anthropologist, and racial hygienist, who studied race mixtures in the German colonies in Africa. In 1937, Fischer wrote the foreword to the German translation of Conquest of the Continent.⁶⁶ The arguments of Fischer, Baur, and Lenz harmonised with those of Grant. They praised the physical, mental, and social superiority of the nordische Rasse, which according to them made representatives of the nordische Rasse leaders of civilisation and the world. Fischer, Baur, and Lenz were not as conceptually clear with their terms as Grant and Stoddard but used both germanisch and nordisch. Lenz argued that "die Germanenreiche, welche aus der sogenannten Völkerwanderung hervorgingen, wurden gegründet von Stämmen nordischer Rasse. Das deutsche Kaiserreich des Mittelalters ruhte ganz und gar auf den Schultern von Germanen."⁶⁷ The interchangeable use of germanisch and nordisch could be because Germany was not part of the core area of the Nordic race, which was mostly located in Sweden. However, the German racial scientists wanted to ensure that Germans could be considered Nordic, so they expanded the historical core area of the Nordic race to the Germanic Reich of the Middle Ages and claimed germanisch as a prehistoric term for nordisch. Similarly to Grant and Stoddard, Lenz surveyed European history proclaiming any major historical event, such as the Reformation or the Renaissance, to be an achievement made through the contribution of the members of the nordische Rasse.⁶⁸ He also agreed with Grant and Stoddard that Aryan was not a term to describe the nordische Rasse but had to be considered a linguistic term. He concluded that it was not an exaggeration to state that the countries of north-western Europe had the most developed civilisation due to the high concentration of the nordische Rasse, since the nordische Rasse was the most intelligent race.⁶⁹

Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 359.

Fritz Lenz, "Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen," in Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre Und Rassenhygiene, ed. Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz (Munich: J.F. Lehmann, 1931), 541.

Lenz, "Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen," 542.

Lenz, "Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen," 542.

In Germany, Grant's second important contact was the philologist and racial theorist Hans F.K. Günther, who was a Nordic enthusiast and a member of the Nordische Bewegung. This was a network of German race and 'folkish' (völkische)⁷⁰ enthusiasts that included several general organisations such as Nordischer Ring and völkische youth organizations such as Jungnordischer Bund or Artamanen.⁷¹ Later, Günther was the leading Nordic expert of the National Socialists and a close friend of Adolf Hitler. He cited Grant frequently in his publications.⁷² Herman Lundborg was also in touch with Günther, who visited Uppsala and Lundborg's racial institute in 1923.⁷³

Grant's ideas were met with great enthusiasm in Germany from the time of the Weimar Republic onwards. The Passing of the Great Race was translated by the Austrian professor Rudolf Pollard with the title Der Untergang der großen Rasse (1929), who concluded that the book should be a warning to the German people. Stoddard, too, did not shy away from being in contact with the German National Socialists and even visited Germany in 1940.⁷⁴

Germany was a meeting point for racial scientists. In the Weimar Republic and especially later under the National Socialists, Germany became central for people interested in the Nordic race and concerned with its condition. The overlap between the ideas of Grant and Stoddard and those of their colleagues in Northern Europe was significant. It might not be too far-fetched even to suggest a global interest in the Nordic race with certain differences occurring between networks of scholars. The intellectual intersections between Grant and Stoddard and their German colleagues were, however, far more direct. Fischer, Lenz, and Baur made, in many ways, the same claims as Grant and Stoddard about Nordic intellectual superiority. It can be assumed they were more influenced by Grant and Stoddard than the other way around, because Grant's books were published in Germany in the 1920s. Nevertheless, Fischer, Lenz, and Baur were not as conceptually clear as Grant and Stoddard. They used nordisch and germanisch as interchangeable terms, on the basis that Germanen had originated in the nordische

Völkisch, was often used by racial theorists and within racist movements, especially National Socialism, to define their own racial superiority.

Karcher, 'Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung'; Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–1940, 55.

Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 359.

Hagerman, Käraste Herman; Gunnar Broberg and Mattias Tydén, "Eugenics in Sweden: Efficient Care," in Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005), 90.

Burgers, "Max Nordau, Madison Grant, and Racialized Theories of Ideology," 139–140.

Rasse.⁷⁵ For them, the term Germanen referred to a population that was part of the nordische Rasse in the Middle Ages. They all agreed however that Aryan was only a linguistic term and that the Aryan race had died out a very long time ago. Conversely, Stoddard and Grant especially, argued that Nordic was the correct term rather than the obsolete term Germanic.

# Transnational Movement of Nordic Enthusiasts?

Following on from the previous section, a question arises whether rising interest in the Nordic race as a key feature to conceptualising civilisation and superiority in the United States and Northern Europe can be considered a transnational movement. Before this question is answered two points need to be discussed: firstly, why the term "Nordic" [nordisch/nordisk] became so popular in scientific discourse; and secondly, how it could later enter social and political discourse and influence legislation like the Johnson Act in the United States or the German race laws in 1933.

In the context of the United States, Matthew Guterl argues thataNordic movement was used after the Great War to try to solve many political problems.⁷⁶ He argues that a Nordic vogue swept over American popular culture in the 1920s, particularly in New York.⁷⁷ Leading authors of the time like Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, and, as already cited, F. Scott Fitzgerald, showed interest in Nordic subjects and referred to them in their work.⁷⁸ The Nordic vogue also strongly influenced the political sphere. Visual differences between so-called races became more important than before.Whereas in the nineteenth century Irish immigrants were unwanted, now they were able to climb the race ladder due to their Whiteness, while immigrants with darker skin from Southern Europe and Black Americans, with their rising liberation movement, became targets of racism.⁷⁹ Whiteness, together with Nordicness, became a leading force within politics

Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 541.

Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 41. I do not think the Nordic trend was limited to the US context. It can also be seen in the Nordic countries with their renewed interest in their region that led to meetings between Nordic scientists and eventually resulted in political and cultural institutions like the Nordic Council. See Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940, 42.

Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940, 42.

Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940, 75, 140.

and the two were strongly interconnected. The framing of the Nordic race and Nordic supremacy led to a redefinition of Whiteness.

Although the general interest in the Nordic race and Nordicness was rooted in the ideas of Grantian eugenics, in the interwar period, according to Guterl, it turned into racial fear.⁸⁰ This was then connected to ideas regarding the social worth of individuals, with attendant cultural, social, and political implications. Being Nordic meant being White and Whiteness became an integral part of American popular culture. Class formation and race consciousness worked hand in hand.⁸¹ This connotation was rooted particularly in the Anglo-American scientific race discourse and from there entered the social debates of the early twentieth century – previously, only immigrants from Germany and England were considered to be White in the United States.⁸² People with fairer skin began to be perceived as valuable members of American society, because – according to scientific and political theories of the time – their skin colour guaranteed that they possessed the characteristics of the Nordic race, such as intelligence, bravery, and morality.⁸³ Whiteness and Nordicness were brought together as concepts by racial theorists and biologists to describe the most desirable people of the American nation. Before this connection was made, people from Nordic countries were not labelled as White.⁸⁴

In Germany, a similar strong turn – what could be called a movement – to Nordicness can be observed. In the early twentieth century, several clubs and committees were founded in Germany, for the purpose of advancing the Nordic idea, for example Nordischer Ring/ Deutscher Widerbund, Bogenclub or the Deutscher Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde. These clubs were non-professional and non-scientific but interacted with the community of racial theorists, some of whom, such as Fritz Lenz or Eugen Fischer, were even members.⁸⁵

The greatest difference between the German and the US Nordic movements was, however, their respective eras. The prime era of Nordicness in the United States was in the 1920s, peaking in 1924 with the Johnson Immigration Act. After 1930, interest in the Nordic race and Nordic superiority decreased again. This did not mean that racial segregation was no longer a salient issue, but the focus on Nordicness in the discourse declined and Whiteness became a

Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940, 41.

Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940, 41.

Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, "Nordic Whiteness," 151–52.

Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 165.

Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, "Nordic Whiteness," 151.

Merle Weßel, An Unholy Union? Eugenic Feminism in the Nordic Countries, ca. 1890–1940

<sup>(</sup>Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2018), 34; Karcher, "Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung," 11–21.

more crucial category. Furthermore, Grant and Stoddard's prominence decreased dramatically in the 1930s. Grant started to focus more on his work on animals, and for the New York Zoo, before his death in 1937.⁸⁶ Stoddard's presence in New York society also declined at the same time. This might be related to the rise of fascism in Europe and their claim to the Nordic concept, which was not compatible with US democracy. However, as the Nordic movement ended in the United States it was only beginning in Germany. With the rise to power of the National Socialists in 1933, Germany's government and political elite were heavily invested in the concept of the superiority of the nordische Rasse. In 1933, the Nordic club Nordische Gesellschaft was put under National Socialist leadership. In this way, it was transformed from an independent and open club to an instrument of the right-wing party. The club had a double task: to lead the propaganda on the nordische Idee in Germany and to establish and nurture close relationships to other Nordic groups.⁸⁷

The leading Nordic enthusiasts of the 1920s became central figures in National Socialist politics. From 1927 until 1942, Eugen Fischer was the leader of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschlichen Erblehre und Eugenik, which was the state institute for eugenics and racial theory during the Weimar Republic and later.⁸⁸ As rector of the university in Berlin between 1933 and 1934, he facilitated the dismissal of many of the Jewish staff members, though he only became a member of the National Socialist Party in 1940. From 1933 onwards, his colleague Fritz Lenz led the eugenics department of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute. Fischer was an expert adviser for the development of the Gesetz für die Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses (1933), and he became a member of the NSDAP in 1937.

In Sweden, the connections between the Nordic idea and racial politics were not as clear. Herman Lundborg retired as leader of the institute for racial biology in 1935. The physician and racial biologist Gunnar Dahlberg became the next leader. In 1934, Sweden implemented legislation that allowed the voluntary sterilization of so-called unfavourable individuals.⁸⁹ Though at first glance the sterilization law in Sweden might have shown similarities with the German laws of 1933 and 1935, the Swedish law did not have an explicit racial background.⁹⁰ It

Alexander, "Prophet of American Racism," 90.

Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–1940, 62.

Paul Weindling, "Weimar Eugenics: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Social Context," Annals of Science 42, no. 3 (1 May 1985): 303–318, doi:10.1080/00033798500200221.

Tydén, Från politik till praktik.

Tydén, Från politik till praktik.

was not based on notions of race as such, especially not on a conceptualization of Nordic supremacy, but it was structurally infused with class, gender and racial bias as part of the population question in the establishment of the welfare state.⁹¹ However, racial repercussions cannot be denied, for example in context of the Sámi people or Travellers.⁹²

Enthusiasm for the Nordic race did not take off in its core country in the same way it did in Germany and the United States. The reasons for this were manifold. From the 1930s onwards, Sweden had a rather stable social democratic government, which steadily modernised the country. The standard of living of the Swedish people increased, and welfare was distributed more equally. Sweden did not see the same political and social issues that were rising in Germany and the United States. Furthermore, the Social Democrats began using the term Nordic, resulting in the term being associated with the liberal left. Its political meaning changed with increased usage of terms such as "Nordic democracy" and the "Nordic welfare state."⁹³ In this way it was not exclusively discussed in racial terms anymore, which made it difficult for right-wing groups and fascists to take over the term, as happened in Germany, for example.

To sum up, Nordicness and Nordic enthusiasm spread in several countries in the 1920s and 1930s, but the results were very different and very much influenced by the political and social environment. In countries like Germany, that had a right-wing government, it would gain social and political ground in the 1930s. More moderate countries like Sweden did not experience a political movement of Nordicness but rather a vital interest. Enthusiasm for Nordicness in the United States was short but intense and far-reaching because the idea was able to gain ground in politics and influence law-making. Despite the Nordic enthusiasts sharing their ideas across borders, it might be an overstatement to suggest it was a transnational movement. In the context of the term "Nordic race," however, one can trace the emergence of a trend towards degeneration, extremism, and racism that originated in the United States and then spread to Europe.

### Conclusion

As prominent and important as they were during their lifetimes, it is remarkable how the legacies of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, in racial science as

Weßel, An Unholy Union?

Broberg and Tydén, "Eugenics in Sweden: Efficient Care," 130–33.

Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17.

well as politics, are forgotten today. Both developed ideas about scientific racism, hierarchies of races, and especially, the supremacy of the Nordic race. These ideas were transformed from scientific constructs to political instruments. Grant and Stoddard contributed significantly to the development of the concept of a Nordic race and its global distribution in the early twentieth century. Neither man was a scientist himself, but both were influential society people who built a bridge between science and society. They popularised the idea that the appearance of people as well as their mental characteristics were based on their race. Most of the ideas Grant and Stoddard proclaimed were not new as such, but Grant especially shaped the term "Nordic race." This term was later used and developed within the global trend towards Whiteness and racial segregation. The invisibility of Grant and Stoddard's Nordic race discourse in the United States can mostly be explained by the irrevocably changed political sphere following the events of the Second World War. The discourse never gained large-scale political ground after the Second World War, however it prevails among far-right and fascist movements who romanticise the Third Reich and continue to discuss the Nordic race in the context of White supremacy.

As I have shown, ideas about the superiority of the Nordic race were discussed in several Western countries and across nations.⁹⁴ In the end, it is difficult to estimate who influenced whom because many publications were written and published at the same time. They contain the same ideas and descriptions regarding racial hierarchies and the composition of individual races. However, two conclusions can be made. Firstly, that "Nordic" [nordisch/nordisk] was a key term of early twentieth century racial theory and science. Secondly, its spread did not originate in the Nordic countries, but was first made popular in the United States and then spread to Europe.

None of the race theorists seemed to doubt that the Nordic race was the most superior race of all and the guarantee for civilisation and progress. Usually, they counted themselves as members of this race and their negative view of the future of the Nordic race might be linked to an expectation of a grim future of their own position in society. The modernisation of societies, and the rise of new democratic ideals as well as communism and fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, challenged the world as they knew it. Grant considered democracy to be an instrument of the weak and did not agree that everyone should have the same voice in society. For Grant, democracy was the end of civilisation.⁹⁵

Björkman and Widmalm, "Selling Eugenics."

Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, xx, 5–8, 227–30.

The passing of greatness also seemed to be at the core of racial theory in the other countries discussed here. Germany feared the disintegration of its nation after their loss in the First World War. The focus on the nordische Rasse was one of the methods of the racial scientists of the Weimar Republic and got picked up in the 1930s by the National Socialists. Racial hierarchy became the method to prove the greatness of the German nation and bring it back to the centre of the world stage. This resulted in the long-term bastardisation of the term nordisch in Germany. The connotations of racial supremacy and National Socialism created a problematic connection that put nordisch forever in the corner of right-wing politics and fascism. When talking about the Nordic countries, Scandinavia is the term most used in Germany today. The term Nordische Länder is basically unknown and rarely used. Nordisch has been replaced with skandinavisch and has connotations connected to the Nordic welfare state and Nordic lifestyle.

Racial scientists argued that Sweden likewise saw the passing of greatness, as parts of its population vanished through emigration. As small country at the periphery, Sweden always had to fight for its significance in the world. To be at the core of the Nordic discourse and be identified as the core area settled by the Nordic race gave it significance. Additionally, the notion of Sweden as a country in between the political extremes of the time might have proven the point for racial theorists about the great virtue of the members of the Nordic race. However, as discussed, Nordic enthusiasts did not gain support in Sweden in the same way they did in Germany and the United States. Yet that does not mean that in Sweden the term nordisk remains free of racist connotations. On the one hand, nordisk was used as political term to describe institutions of the region like the Nordic Council, Nordic cultural institutions like Nordiska museet, or political concepts such as the Nordic welfare state. On the other hand, there is today an ongoing battle with right-wing and fascist organizations, such as Nordiska motståndsrörelsen, who try to reclaim the term nordisk for racist and White supremacist ideas.

To conclude, the concept of a Nordic race was an international concept based on a glorification of the past and the fear of the future. It was founded on the idea that people identify themselves according to physical appearance and skin colour and that human races can be divided into race hierarchies. The ideas about the Nordic race combined science and politics and brought racial ideas to the forefront of Western societies. Its significance was strongly shaped by national and political circumstances that defined the grounds on which ideas of Nordic supremacy could grow and on which today's extremist movements for White supremacy, like the Nordic resistance movement, still rest.

# Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor From the "Middle Way" to The Nordic Way: Changing Rhetorics of the Nordic Model in Britain<sup>¹</sup>

# Introduction

The Economist's special report on "Why the world should look at the Nordic countries," published in February 2013 with a Viking on the front cover, is just one well-known example of references to the Nordic model since 2010.² Indeed, the "Nordic model" is possibly one of the most widely recognized examples of the rhetorical use of the adjective "Nordic." At the same time, it is also a highly contested concept, within the region and outside it. There is a well-established field of research on images of the Nordic region and their circulation. Scholars acknowledge that foreign images or xenostereotypes of Nordic practices and policies have been shaped in reflexive interaction with self-images or autostereotypes produced in the Nordic countries themselves.³ Moreover, positive stereotypes of the region have frequently been counter-balanced by more negative ones. The Nordic countries have been described as dystopian warnings against the perils of high taxation and an all-powerful state, sometimes caricatured with references to high levels of drunkenness and suicide.⁴

Although it is possible to trace some continuity in the ways in which the Nordic model has been referred to over time, its meaning has generally been unstable, both internally and externally. International interest in the Nordic region has

Mary Hilson's research is part of the project "Nordic Model(s) in the global circulation of ideas, 1970–2020," supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant number 8018–00023B).We would like to thank the other members of the project team Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, Carl Marklund and Byron Rom-Jensen for valuable comments on an earlier draft of the chapter.

Adrian Wooldridge, "The next supermodel: Why the world should look at the Nordic countries," The Economist, February 2, 2013, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/02/02/thenext-supermodel.

Kazimierz Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2002).

For example Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians (London: Allen Lane, 1971); see also Frederick Hale, "Brave New World in Sweden? Roland Huntford's The New Totalitarians," Scandinavian Studies 78, no. 2 (2006).

intensified during particular historical periods. One such moment was the 1930s, when the region was famously celebrated as a "middle way" between the extremes of authoritarianism and democracy, capitalism and communism.⁵ According to historian Bo Stråth, the earliest references to the "Nordic model" as such date from the 1960s, when the term was used by political scientists referring to Nordic co-operation within the United Nations.⁶ As Stråth puts it, the widespread use of the term "Nordic model" from the 1990s should be seen in the context of "the search for new identities, communities and interpretative frames… in order to rescue something perceived to be under threat."⁷

Studies of different aspects of the Nordic model have proliferated during the 2000s and 2010s, though there have been, as far as we know, few attempts to explore the history of the term and its rhetorical uses, beginning with its emergence in the 1960s and charting its fluctuating meanings through subsequent years.⁸ This chapter has two parts. In the first part, we explore how the term "Nordic model" was used by scholars in comparative analyses of the historical development of the Nordic countries during the post-war period, paying attention to the idea of a Nordic political model and the Nordic model of the welfare state. The focus is on English-language scholarship, especially that produced within the UK.

The distinction between the Nordic model as analytical category and as a normative policy model for emulation elsewhere has never been watertight, however. In the second part of the chapter, we consider how the Nordic model concept has been applied to politics and policy programmes, taking recent political debates in the UK as a case study. Despite fundamental similarities in European

Stråth, "Den nordiska modellen," 55.

The most famous example of this is Marquis Childs, Sweden – the Middle Way (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936). See Carl Marklund, "The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model: Three Frames for the Image of Sweden," Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009); Peter Stadius, "Happy Countries: Appraisals of Interwar Nordic Societies," in Communicating the North, ed. Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).

Bo Stråth, "Den nordiska modellen. Historisk bakgrund och hur talet om en nordisk modell uppstod," Nordisk Tidskrift (1993); see also Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 32.

See however Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, "Always in Crisis, Always a Solution? The Nordic Model as a Political and Scholarly Concept," in The Nordic Economic, Social and Political Model: Challenges in the 21st Century, ed. Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, 1–19 (New York: Routledge, 2021) doi:10.4324/9780429026690–1; Byrkjeflot, Haldor, Lars Mjøset, Mads Mordhorst and Klaus Petersen, eds. The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideals and Images (London: Routledge, 2021) doi:10.4324/9781003156925. Work in progress by Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, Mary Hilson, Carl Marklund, and Byron Rom-Jensen as part of the IFRD-funded project "Nordic model(s) in the global circulation of ideas, 1970–2020" also tracks the changing meanings of the Nordic model.

approaches to politics and governance, there is nonetheless a pronounced tendency to make the central contradictions of foreign political projects and the antagonisms of other societies intelligible through a process of domestication. In this process, these contradictions and antagonisms are played out through the familiar contradictions of domestic politics and the antagonisms and social conflicts of the "watching" society, rather than the "watched." In this chapter, the "watching" domesticating society will generally be the UK and the "watched" societies Nordic. The adoption of political ideologies in the Nordic countries and the UK, which were justified in terms of a particular "Nordic" way (or "model") of doing politics, were heavily dependent on the academic studies discussed in the first part of the chapter.

We argue in this section that the adoption of Third Way political logic and strategy by social democrats in Europe created a rhetoric which was easily imitable by liberal and conservative parties in the UK and the Nordic countries, and which was also used to re-articulate the meaning of the "Nordic" in Norden and abroad. This manifested itself concretely in two areas: the broad idea of the "radical centre,"⁹ – an approach to politics characterised by the rejection of traditional economic divisions between left and right¹⁰ – and the related attempt to position existing social democratic, and later liberal conservative politics, especially those of the Nordic countries, within the parameters of this "radical centre." This case study will suggest answers to two questions: Why and how were "radical centrist" political strategies adopted in the UK and Sweden from the late 1990s until the 2010s? And how did this process alter the rhetoric of the "Nordic model"?

The terms "Scandinavian model" and "Nordic model" are treated as synonyms here, though it is our impression that the term "Nordic model" has become more prominent since 2010, at least in English-speaking contexts. Use of the Nordic or Scandinavian model also has to be understood in relation to references to national models, especially the Swedish model. This term was established earlier and until the 1990s at least often stood as a proxy for the region as a whole, though never exclusively.¹¹

Jenny Andersson, The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy in the Knowledge Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).

Chantal Mouffe, "The Radical Centre: A Politics without Adversary", Soundings no. 9 (Summer 1998), 11–23.

Carl Marklund has traced an early usage of the term "Swedish model," in an American source from 1941, where it referred to collective bargaining arrangements. See Marklund, "The Social Laboratory," 272; Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, "Tracing the Nordic Model: French Crea-

### The Nordic model before the 1990s

In his textbook Scandinavian Politics Today, first published in 1999, political scientist David Arter identified two ideal-type Nordic models. The Nordic model of government referred to "the political institutions, structures and policy measures in [the Nordic] countries;" while the Nordic welfare model was "in large part the legislative product of the former."¹² Distinctive features of the Nordic political model included: the strength and dominance of social democratic parties within stable multi-party systems; a consensual approach to policy making involving formal consultation of corporatist interests; centralised collective bargaining; strong state regulation and the importance of personal relations among elites in relatively small states.¹³ Arter's list of features was similar to those found in other formal definitions of the Nordic model, for example in the Danish encyclopaedia Den Store Danske, which referred to the universal welfare state, tax-financed and state-run; the influence of social democratic parties within a consensual political culture; and women's high levels of economic activity.¹⁴

In defining a Nordic political model Arter was drawing on the established literature in political science that treated the small Nordic countries as a natural unit for comparative analysis. Such comparisons could emphasise similarities – between the Nordic region and other countries or regions – but also internal differences within the region.¹⁵ In an earlier study from 1982, Arter and his three co-

tions, Swedish Appropriations and Nordic Articulations," in Making and Circulation of the Nordic Model, ed. Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. (London: Routledge, 2021), 83–101.

David Arter, Scandinavian Politics Today (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 147.

Arter, Scandinavian Politics Today, 147–49.

Allan Karker, "Den nordiske model," Den Store Danske, lex.dk, Accessed 27 May 2021, https:// denstoredanske.lex.dk/den\_nordiske\_model. See also Knut Heidar, "Comparative Perspectives on the Northern Countries," in Nordic Politics: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Knut Heidar, (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2004); Nicholas Aylott, "A Nordic Model of Democracy? Political Representation in Northern Europe," in Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe: Political Institutions and Discourse, ed. Nicholas Aylott (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); Mary Hilson, The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (London: Reaktion, 2008). On Nordic gender equality, see Pirjo Markkola's chapter in this volume.

Examples include: Dankwart A Rustow, "Scandinavia: Working Multi-Party Systems," in Modern Political Parties: Approaches to Comparative Politics, ed. Sigmund Neumann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Nils Andrén, Government and Politics in the Nordic Countries. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964); Peter Essaiasson and Knut Heidar, eds., Beyond Westminster and Congress: The Nordic Experience (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000).

authors – all academics from British universities – had asked whether the Scandinavian (Nordic) states could be regarded as "a separate species of the West European genus of parliamentary democracies." If they were, could they be classified as "consensual" democracies, in contrast to other more adversarial or confrontational ways of doing politics?¹⁶ Drawing on Arendt Lijphart's work on consensual democracies, Elder, Thomas, and Arter defined the term in terms of a) the broad acceptance of the political system and low levels of opposition to its rules; b) low levels of political conflict; c) a process of public policy making based on consensus and compromise.¹⁷ They found that politics in the Nordic countries largely corresponded to the first two criteria, but in the context of the early 1980s they noted that consensus seemed to be waning with the rise of new political issues and parties. They also questioned the distinctiveness of aspects of policy making in the Nordic context, such as the widespread use of commissions of enquiry.¹⁸

As reviewer John Logue noted, the notion of consensual democracy functioned here as an analytical "model," against which the empirical realities of the Nordic democracies could be studied. The book's authors also used the term "Nordic political model" to refer to the five-party system of Scandinavian politics. Logue's own textbook on Scandinavian politics, co-authored with fellow US academic Eric Einhorn, appeared in 1989. Einhorn and Logue were interested in analysing the "central policy areas of the Scandinavian model," above all the provision of social services as part of a mixed capitalist economy, or in other words the welfare state. They also posed the question, "is there a Scandinavian democratic model?" analysing the evolution of Scandinavian political institutions and democratic culture in three stages: political democracy, social democracy, and economic democracy. As the book's subtitle suggested, a central thesis was that the "key to the 'Scandinavian model'" was the expansion of the public sector under the stewardship of strong social democratic parties, although the authors also insisted that it was a fallacy to regard the Scandinavian countries as "socialistic."¹⁹

Neil Elder, Alastair H Thomas, and David Arter, The Consensual Democracies? The Government and Politics of the Scandinavian States (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), 8. See also John Logue, review of The Consensual Democracies? by Neil Elder et al., Scandinavian Studies 55, no. 3 (Summer 1983).

Elder, Thomas, and Arter, The Consensual Democracies? 9–11.

Elder, Thomas, and Arter, The Consensual Democracies?

Eric Einhorn and John Logue, Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social Democratic Scandinavia (New York: Praeger, 1989). "Scandinavia" in this book referred to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

As with the Nordic political model, the notion of a Nordic welfare model drew on an established tradition of analysing some or all of the Nordic countries as a natural unit in comparative studies, even if such studies were not explicitly theorised as an ideal-type "model."²⁰ A particularly influential contribution was Gøsta Esping-Andersen's Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), which was to become the standard reference in the field for a generation.²¹ Drawing from a comparison of eighteen welfare states, Esping-Andersen characterized the three Scandinavian countries as a distinctive "social democratic regime," based on the extent to which these countries had decommodified social relations or in other words the extent to which citizens were freed from dependence on the market for their welfare. Through the comprehensive and universal provision of social rights, the welfare state had contributed to forging social relations in Scandinavia that were relatively egalitarian, in contrast to the more stratified systems of the other two "worlds," the liberal Anglo-Saxon countries or the corporatist welfare states of central Europe. The unique feature of the "peculiarly 'Scandinavian model,'" according to Esping-Andersen and Walter Korpi, was "the extent to which social policy has become comprehensive and institutional."²²

As an ideal type, the Nordic model therefore functioned as a heuristic category for testing the empirical realities of Nordic politics and society, both within the region and in broader comparisons with other units. Used in this way, the term was certainly present in English-language scholarship during the 1980s, implying comparative analyses structured around the question "is there a Nordic model?" Often, the conclusion was that there was not. Writing in 2001, Niels Finn Christensen and Klaus Petersen noted how the Nordic model had become a standard concept in comparative welfare state research, but they coined the phrase "one model – five exceptions" to sum up the historical differences between the five Nordic countries.²³A decade earlier, sociologist Lars Mjøset had

For example: George R. Nelson, ed., Freedom and Welfare: Social Patterns in the Northern Countries of Europe (Copenhagen: Ministries of Social Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, 1953); Stein Ringen, "Welfare Studies in Scandinavia," Scandinavian Political Studies 9 (1974).

Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). For an assessment of the significance of Esping-Andersen's study in welfare research see Patrick Emmenegger et al., "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: The Making of a Classic," Journal of European Social Policy 25, no. 1 (February 2015): 3–13, doi:10.1177/0958928714556966. Gøsta Esping-Andersen and Walter Korpi, "From Poor Relief to Institutional Welfare States: The Development of Scandinavian Social Policy," in The Scandinavian Model: Welfare States and Welfare Research, ed. Robert Erikson et al. (Armonk: M E Sharpe, 1987), 42.

Niels Finn Christiansen and Klaus Petersen, "Preface," Scandinavian Journal of History 26, no. 3 (2001); Mikko Kautto, "The Nordic Countries," in The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare

concluded that "comparative research has so far only demonstrated a number of Nordic peculiarities… [which] do not, it seems, form a comprehensive and coherent model with common mechanisms."²⁴ On the other hand, Mjøset also concluded that the Nordic model could form the basis for a renewal of regional identity at a time of considerable uncertainty for the region. This was an assessment which has shown itself, in retrospect, to be a remarkably accurate prophecy. Ideal types never exist in political vacuums, but are always, in J Magnus Ryner's words, "decisively shaped by pre-understandings and assumptions, that in turn reflect particular social concerns and purposes."²⁵ The history of the Nordic model as an analytical category cannot be considered independently from more normative understandings of the region, the shared characteristics of which were exportable and worth emulating.

As Mjøset predicted, this use of the Nordic model was to become widespread from the 1990s, but it was also present before then. In reviewing Elder, Thomas, and Arter's study of consensual democracy, John Logue noted how this was a "timely theme, particularly in Thatcher's Britain" of the early 1980s.²⁶ In 1990, Stein Kuhnle observed that "[t]he so-called 'Scandinavian model' now appears to attract attention from all political corners of the world, particularly from representatives of the failed communist systems of Eastern Europe," for whom Scandinavian social democratic capitalism was more attractive than 'Western capitalism.'²⁷ Another reviewer of Einhorn and Logue's book argued that Scandinavia "may well serve as a model" in changing times, "with a confused world seeking answers to the riddle of economic and political well being."²⁸ An early example of a book that referred to "the Nordic model" in its title was an anthology edited by two academics from Scottish universities, which appeared in 1980. Subtitled Studies in public policy innovation, the book posed the direct question "What can

State, ed. Francis G. Castles et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). An outline of the characteristics of the Nordic welfare model and a summary of the literature on this topic can be found in Niels Finn Christiansen and Pirjo Markkola, "Introduction," in The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, ed. Niels Finn Christiansen et al. (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006).

Lars Mjøset, "The Nordic Model Never Existed, but Does It Have a Future?," Scandinavian Studies 64, no. 4 (1992): 663.

J. Magnus Ryner, "The Nordic Model: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?," New Political Economy 12, no. 1 (March 2007): 64, doi:10.1080/13563460601068644.

Logue, review of The Consensual Democracies?

Stein Kuhnle, review of Modern Welfare States, The Journal of Politics 52, no. 3 (1990), https:// doi.org/10.2307.

Charles H Zwicker, review of Modern Welfare States, Presidential Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1991), 197–98.

we learn from Scandinavian society?" in its opening line. The policy models presented – on topics including the role of women, land ownership, the use of oil revenues, and state support for the arts and media – were based on national examples from across the region.²⁹ The volume also included a chapter by Clive Archer on "Nordic co-operation: a model for the British Isles," which addressed explicitly the possibility that the Nordic Council could function as a model for relations between the nations of the British Isles, following a decade of conflict in Northern Ireland and an upsurge of nationalism in Scotland and Wales.³⁰ Tom Nairn's book on the same theme The Break Up of Britain, first published in 1977, had also asked rhetorically whether an independent Scotland could be "a candidate for membership of an enlarged Nordic Union?" but argued that it "does not possess the homogeneity of the Scandinavian models."³¹

# The Nordic model since the 1990s

The term "Nordic/Scandinavian model" was used in English-language academic scholarship during the 1980s. It functioned as an analytical concept for studying the region with a comparative perspective, most notably in the disciplines of history, political science and welfare studies, and it was also used in the normative sense to refer to elements of Scandinavian policies and politics that were seen as attractive and potentially worthy of emulation, at least in the UK. In this context, references to the Scandinavian or Nordic model were often understood – at least implicitly – as synonyms for the Swedish model.³²

As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the early 1990s was an important watershed for the Nordic region. External shocks – the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and a new dynamic phase in European integration – combined with significant domestic changes to challenge ideas of Nordic

Clive Archer and Stephen Maxwell, eds., The Nordic Model: Studies in Public Policy Innovation (Farnborough: Gower, 1980).

Clive Archer, "Nordic Co-operation: A Model for the British Isles," in The Nordic Model: Studies in Public Policy Innovation, ed. Clive Archer and Stephen Maxwell (Farnborough: Gower, 1980).

Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism, rev. ed. (1977; repr., London: Verso), 182, 193. For a discussion of Nordic models in the context of Scottish devolution debates, see Andrew G. Newby, "'In Building a Nation Few Better Examples Can Be Found': Norden and the Scottish Parliament," Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (September 2009): 307–329, doi:10.1080/03468750903134749.

An example of this is found in Archer and Maxwell, The Nordic Model, where the literature cited referred exclusively to Sweden. See also Hellenes, "Tracing the Nordic Model."

exceptionalism. Taking stock of these changed circumstances in 1992, international relations scholar Ole Wæver was not optimistic about the long-term prospects for "Nordicity," suggesting that the Baltic Sea offered a more dynamic alternative for building a regional identity.³³ For Wæver, "the crisis of the Scandinavian or Swedish model"–"Scandinavian or Swedish model" here refers to the social democratic welfare state – was triggered partly by deeper cultural shifts, meaning that, "the Nordic or Swedish model has been hit by the general questioning of modernity and enlightenment values." The attractiveness of the Nordic model was also undermined by the end of the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, which meant that for the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, the "German model of economy and society" was likely to be more attractive.³⁴

Wæver's use of the Nordic model in this context refers to the social democratic welfare state, of which the foremost representative was Sweden. The Social Democratic Party lost the general election of 1991, and the new centre-right coalition government, led by the conservative Moderate Party, explicitly distanced itself from the Nordic model in favour of an agenda of economic reform and European integration. According to Hans Mouritzen, domestic debates focused mainly on the Swedish model, while the accompanying rejection of the Nordic model was largely a "silent revolution."³⁵ Mouritzen himself, like Lars Mjøset, remained more sanguine about the continued possibility for the Nordic countries to build a specific regional identity around the Nordic model within an expanding EU.³⁶

A decade later there was little evidence that the vision of a revitalized Norden within the EU materialized, with signs instead that the Nordic governments were becoming more reluctant to promote the idea of regional exceptionalism.³⁷ But at the same time, the use of the term Nordic model to refer to political or social developments in the region became ever more widely used. In the second part of this chapter, we explore how the rhetorics of the Nordic model was ap-

Ole Wæver, "Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War," International Affairs 68, no. 1 (January 1992): 77–102, doi:10.2307/2620462.

Wæver, "Nordic Nostalgia," 86. In this article Wæver used the terms "Scandinavian model" and "Nordic model" as synonyms.

Hans Mouritzen, "The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall," Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 1 (February 1995): 14, doi:10.1177/0022343395032001002.

Mjøset, "The Nordic Model Never Existed;" Mouritzen, "The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument."

Christopher S. Browning, "Branding Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of Exceptionalism," Cooperation and Conflict 42, no. 1 (March 2007): 27–51, doi:10.1177/<PHONE_NUMBER>073475.

plied to politics and policy programmes during the 1990s and after, taking recent debates in the UK as a case study.

# Britain's "radical centre" and its relationship to the Nordic model

#### The Third Way

The late 1990s saw a period of resurgence of social democracy in Europe and the creation of a detailed formal framework, typically glossed as the "Third Way." The process of transmission and circulation of Third Way ideas is resistant to any simple chronological narrative, and the Third Way should not be considered a homogenous force across Europe, even though some of its implications were homogenising.³⁸ Here, the focus will be the development of a new social democratic logic by sociologist Anthony Giddens and its propagation by Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, following the latter's election as leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and the election of the "New Labour" government in 1997.³⁹ Some of New Labour's ideas were adopted in Europe, including the idea of "radical centrism," which we will return to later in this section.

Third Way thinkers presented their ideas as novel, positioning them ideologically between social democracy and neoliberalism rather than capitalism and communism as previous social science and political models had done. However, Anthony Giddens, the chief intellectual force behind the Third Way, fits comfortably into a tradition of gradualist political interest in the Nordic countries stretching back to the 1930s. Early socialist reformers were concerned as much with co-operatives and agricultural reform as the democratic institutions and welfare systems which would come to characterise later incarnations of the Nordic model.⁴⁰

John Callaghan, "Old Social Democracy, New Social Movements and Social Democratic Programmatic Renewal, 1968–2000,' in Transitions in Social Democracy: Cultural and Ideological Problems of the Golden Age, ed. John Callaghan and Ilaria Favretto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 177–93; Andersson, The Library and the Workshop.

Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 43; Tony Blair, "Leader's Speech," Blackpool, 1996, British Political Speech, http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202.

Kazimierz Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2000); Mary Hilson, "Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the

In British political terms, Giddens should be seen as the intellectual heir to a revisionist tradition most associated with Tony Crosland, a Labour MP and minister, whose 1956 book The Future of Socialism established Sweden, rather than Scandinavia or Norden, as a place which had achieved the basic goals of socialism. Crosland set out the political goals of socialism as follows:

According to Crosland, Sweden had achieved the first and fourth of these goals in the 1940s, a full ten years before Britain, and was well on the way to achieving the second and third in consensual fashion through mechanisms like "joint enterprise councils," public investment, and strict controls on share dividends and reinvestment of profits. This view did not go unchallenged and Crosland's rather uncritical admiration of Sweden led Perry Anderson, a leading thinker of the British New Left, to state that the country was "not so much a normal object of real knowledge as a didactic political fable."⁴² Broadly speaking, however, it was Crosland's image of Sweden that prevailed on the Anglophone Left.⁴³

While Giddens' articulation of the Third Way sits within this revisionist tradition, it nonetheless breaks from it in important ways. Notably, while Crosland envisioned Swedish society as comprised of social and political institutions which intervened in and regulated markets, Giddens envisaged Nordic social policy as ameliorating the excesses of basically unregulated free markets. It is therefore characteristic of the period that the Nordic policies of greatest interest to the Labour Party were those which offered social protection in ways which were consistent with free markets.

Nordic 'Middle Way,'" Contemporary European History 22, no. 2 (May 2013): 181–98, doi:10.1017/ S0960777313000040.

C.A.R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), 67.

Perry Anderson, "Mr Crosland's Dreamland," New Left Review 1, no. 7 (1961): 4.

Peter Aimer, "The Strategy of Gradualism and the Swedish Wage‐earner Funds," West European Politics 8, no. 3 (July 1985): 43–55, doi:10.1080/01402388508424540; Andrew Scott, "Social Democracy in Northern Europe: Its Relevance for Australia," Australian Review of Public Affairs 7, no. 1 (2006): 1–17; Andrew Scott, "Looking to Sweden in Order to Reconstruct Australia," Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (September 2009): 330–352, doi:10.1080/<PHONE_NUMBER>3134756.

This was particularly true of flexicurity: the Danish political economic and labour market reforms of the 1990s and measures to introduce market structures into the British National Health Service (NHS).⁴⁴ In his book The Third Way and Its Critics Giddens, for example, claimed that:

the Nordic welfare states have long since concentrated upon active labour market policies, now making a delayed appearance in an Anglo-Saxon context under the label of "welfare to work." Nordic social democracy has been characterised by a willingness to introduce reforms on a pragmatic basis with the aim of finding solutions that are effective.⁴⁵

New Labour's retrenchment of unemployment payments was, according to Giddens, as much influenced by Swedish and Danish approaches to the labour market as they were by the US Democrats' attacks on "welfare queens."⁴⁶ Formally, the Nordic states functioned as a place where the problems facing industrial societies had already been solved through innovative political economic and welfare policy. The Nordic "pragmatic" approach to this policy captured the essence of Giddens' and Ulrich Beck's shared framework of "reflexive modernization."

Perhaps the most significant innovation was the gradual association of market ideas with the Nordic countries, especially Sweden. Large portions of New Labour's policy on health and social care were articulated in terms of Swedish and Danish public health care systems. This was primarily achieved by positioning the Nordic systems as sites of consumer choice. The Department for Health's 2002 Delivering the NHS Plan, for example, noted that "[I]n Sweden and Denmark patients have access to information on waiting times and options for treatment, and patients who have been waiting for treatment have the choice of an alternative provider."⁴⁷ This served the immediate strategic imperative of defending a taxation-funded health care model, which could simultaneously accommodate market structures; its association with Sweden and Denmark made it seem modern and pragmatic.

Jeremy Laurance, "Bed Blocking the Scandinavian Solution," The Independent, 19 April 2002; Patricia Hewitt, "Investment and Reform: Transforming Health and Healthcare," Annual health and social care lecture, 13 December, 2005, transcript, The National Archives, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100408103750/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH\_4124484.

Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 17.

Giddens, The Third Way, 30 –31.

Department of Health, Delivering the NHS Plan: Next Steps on Investment Next Steps on Reform, April 2002. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20130107105354/http:// www.dh.gov.uk/prod\_consum\_dh/groups/dh\_digitalassets/@dh/<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
This association of market-based health reform with the Nordic countries continued into the late 2000s.⁴⁸ Patricia Hewitt, Health Secretary during the third Blair government 2005–2007, approvingly quoted the Social Democratic slogan from the Göran Persson era, "proud, but not satisfied," arguing that this reflected the new natural state of Labour government.⁴⁹ Ironically, this slogan was considered unimaginative and complacent in Sweden.⁵⁰ However, from the perspective of the Labour government, adopting Nordic political solutions – with reference to well-established social democratic rhetoric about Sweden and Norden – offered a potential means of justifying otherwise controversial policies. By domesticating Swedish marketization policies and subsuming them within British political logics, New Labour had missed the change in public sentiment in Sweden, away from Social Democratic modes of government.

The Nordic countries were thus the "social laboratories" from earlier eras, now considered experiments in the application of market solutions to the problems of "globalised" societies. Of all the Nordic countries, Sweden in particular featured in this rhetoric, despite its relatively late and partial move towards marketization, compared to, say, Norway. Politically, these earlier models had been underwritten by a hegemonic social democracy which could efface the social tensions and antagonisms of Swedish and Nordic societies. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1991–92 and the efforts of the Bildt government (in office 1991–94) to contest the meaning of "Swedish" and "Nordic," these signifiers began to acquire new meanings. The weakening of the social democratic hegemony was an opportunity for new articulations of Sweden and Norden to develop, which were more amenable to free-market policy programmes, both domestically and abroad.