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Outsiders have long viewed Scandinavia as special, starting with the ancient Greeks and their myths of Ultima Thule, a place “where the Sun goes to rest.” Today, we admire Scandinavia for its universal welfare, equality, peacefulness, and untouched nature—not to mention its interior design, crime literature, and love of all things hygge.

Yet Nordic history has its hardships and dark periods, too: pandemics, war, the expansionism of the Viking Age and the eighteenth century, alliances with Nazi Germany in World War II, and (as elsewhere) a eugenics movement in the twentieth century.

In The Shortest History of Scandinavia, historian Mart Kuldkepp masterfully sketches the outlines of Scandinavia’s rich history—from the first known peoples of the region, who followed the ice sheet north as it retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, to the Scandinavians living in nations that are among the happiest in the world today. The book spans the history of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden from prehistory to the present day.

In this short but deeply insightful volume, Kuldkepp illuminates the concept of “Nordicness”—a hard-to-define quality that has nonetheless steered the region to respond to major challenges, actively shaping its history and exerting a considerable influence on European and global history in the process.

The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.