Introduction: Nordic Colonialisms and Scandinavian Studies

While a number of european area studies have long discussed colonial pasts and postcolonial presents, postWorld War ii historical research on the european north has not until recently begun to consider the ways in which this region contributed to, benefitted from, and now inhabit colonial histories. as observed by Keskinen et al. (2009), this is arguably because the nations of the region have often been imagined, internally and externally, as champions of global equality and minority rights. in the light of this selfimage, the nordic nations’ pursuit of colonial dominion, and their contribution to the colonial efforts of other nations, were routinely written out of the national histories of the nordic countries, or, as described by Fur and ipsen (Fur 2009) imagined as a marginal and altruistic project. indeed, as Fur has noted elsewhere, nordic history and colonialism were, for a long period of time, “unthinkable” (2013, 17) to the historian.2