Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
To learn about Scandinavia past and present, check out a few of these books
and films.
Nonfiction
ForasolidgraspofScandinavia'spast,try
A History of Scandinavia: Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland
(Derry) or
Scandinavia Since 1500
(Nordstrom).ThehistoryoftheSwedishpeoplefromfeudalismtodemocracy
is recorded in
Sweden: The Nation's History
(Scott)
. The Vikings
(Else
Roesdhal) offers a Scandinavian perspective on this complex Nordic society.
For insight into Hans Christian Andersen, try his autobiography,
The Fairy
Tale of My Life,
and Jens Andersen's biography
Hans Christian Andersen: A
New Life. Scandinavian Folk and Fairy Tales
(Boos) is a good compilation.
In
My Childhood,
Roivo Pekkanen perceptively recalls his family's working-
class life in early-20th-century Finland. Peter Tveskov combines historical
fact with childhood memories of Denmark under German occupation during
World War II in
Conquered, Not Defeated.
Norwegian biologist Thor Heyer-
dahl records his historic 1947 journey from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa-wood
raft in
Kon-Tiki.
Fiction
Read a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tales:
The Little
Mermaid, The Little Match Girl, The Princess and the Pea, The Steadfast Tin
Soldier,
and many more. Also beloved by children of all ages are the
Pippi
Longstocking
books by Sweden's Astrid Lindgren.
Swede Selma Lagerlöf was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Lit-
erature (in 1909) for her fantastical children's novel,
The Wonderful Adven-
tures of Nils.
Nobel Prize winners by Norwegians include Knut Hamsun's in-
fluential
Growth of the Soil
(w. 1920) and Sigrid Undset's epic
Kristin Lav-
ransdatter
(w. 1928)
.
Music and Silence
by Rose Tremain captures 17th-century Denmark
through the eyes of a lute-player at court.
The Emigrants
is the first of Vilhelm
Moberg's four-volume epic about Swedish immigrants settling the Americ-
