(Part 2) Best scandinavian history books according to redditors
We found 315 Reddit comments discussing the best scandinavian history books. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Volumes could be written on this and it's not easy to finesse a concise answer. First, let's restrict ourselves to the Northern European supernatural beings with the peculiar characteristic of living in social settings similar to humans and distinct from elsewhere, where people regarded supernatural beings as more likely to appear alone (or in pairs or triplets, but , nevertheless acting in unison). In short, the supernatural beings of Ireland, Britain, Brittany, and Scandinavia are what we are talking about here.
For whatever reason - and it is not exactly clear - some of the people in this geographic swath were more likely to perceive supernatural beings as being diminutive. The Danes, for example, had small elf-like trolls, while the counterparts of this type of supernatural beings (not always called trolls), in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland tended to be human sized.
Similarly, the Cornish and the people of neighboring Devon had diminutive piskies, who acted much like (and played similar roles in legend) when compared to the fairies and elves of the rest of Britain and of Ireland. That said, human encounters with Danish trolls or with Cornish piskies often involved human-sized supernatural beings, and it only became apparent to the human that "these folks just aren't right," after interacting for a while - or because a human captive warns the person not to eat the food or otherwise that this is the dangerous realm of the supernatural. This issue of size contradicts the stories and beliefs in these two regions that maintain that the supernatural beings are small. The problem, of course, is that the supernatural doesn't always behave itself, and it certainly does not conduct itself according to the rules that govern our "natural" world.
The most important thing about the supernatural beings within this entire region is that they usually had some peculiar characteristic that made it clear to people who encountered them that something here just wasn't natural. That feature is not always immediately apparent. The Swedish woman who encounters a charcoal burner in the forest seems nice enough, until he eventually notices that she has a cow tail. Then he understand that he must extract himself from a dangerous situation. Sometimes the feature is the capacity for sudden invisibility. Flexibility in the apparent size of these beings is in keeping with this sort of unnatural characteristic.
Flexibility in size is apparent in Ireland, where the sidhe - the Irish fairies - are generally perceived to be human-sized or nearly so - and yet people use the polite term of the "wee folk" to describe these beings. They weren't always "wee", but they were capable of reduced size when it suited them (just as invisibility was important, a feature behind the Icelandic/Norwegian term of the Huldra/hulderfolk - the hidden ones or the hidden folk).
Victorian-era children's literature and art revealed a fascination with these supernatural beings, and it mutated them to a considerable extent. Beginning with Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, there was an emerging - and increasingly popular - trend to collect the adult folk literature of the folktale and transform it into printed, abridged "fairytales" for the consumption of urban children of the emerging middle class.
The supernatural beings in question were terrifyingly dangerous, capable of ruining lives and abducting people, keeping them in a godless realm where redemption would never come. For Victorian children's literature, this dangerous aspect of the supernatural beings needed to be diminished, and the supernatural beings needed to be reduced in other ways. Beginning with the publications of Ann Elizabeth Bray in 1838, dealing with Cornish and Devonian Piskies, Victorian literature found a key in diminishing the frightful aspect of the supernatural beings. While the folk in many places conceived of their supernatural beings as capable of small stature, here was a body of folklore that made it the standard for these entities.
This transformation is over simplified, but you get the point: small statue was common enough throughout the region; at the same time, everyone could conceive of the supernatural beings of capable of human size when interacting with people; and Victorian literature found it convenient to emphasize the small size.
For sources: I deal with some of this in my book on trolls (2014). Katharine Briggs also has several publications dealing with the world of faerie and its treatment in the Victorian era. See especially her "Encyclopedia of Fairies (1976). Let me know if you need clarification, for a subject that is at best clear as mud!
Since I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the questions right now, I'm going to copy and paste two answers I've given to similar question in earlier threads. (One of which is a copy-and-paste job itself.)
1. General books:
I'm going to copy and paste an answer I once gave to someone who asked me for book recommendations via private message.
>Hi there!
>No Problem! Always glad to help. If you need a quick overview over the topic or are rather unfamiliar with it The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings gives a good first impression. Else Roesdahl's The Vikings is a bit more in depth but with less pictures. There's also Peter Sawyer's Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. All three of those are slightly outdated but they give a great first impression of the Age. If money's thight, start with Sawyer, then Roesdahl, then the atlas.
>If you want to go more in depth there's The Viking World by Stefan Brink and Neil Price. Do not confuse it with the book of the same name by Graham-Campbell and Wilson, which is rather outdated. This "Viking World" is a collection of essays by the world's leading experts on the period an the de facto standard of the discipline at the moment. It's well worth the price.
>If you are (or at least read) German (which is possible from your username) try to get the current catalogue of the Haithabu museum. It gives a good overview over that important trading settlement. Or even better: visit there! (Or any of the large Scandinavian National Museums (Moesgård, Statens Historiska museet, or the Viking ship museums in Roskilde and Oslo, respectively).
>If you are interested in the world of the sagas you can't go wrong with Jesse Byock's Viking Age Iceland.
>If you are looking for a quick ressource or if you have a specific question there's the site of The Viking Answer Lady. She appears to be a reenactor not a scholar but her answers are very well sourced and I have yet to find a major error on her site. Or you can always ask me/post to AskHistorians...
>cheers, wee_little_puppetman
Also, you might want to check out this huge annotated Viking movie list.
There's also a rather good three part BBC series on the Vikings on Youtube.
And for some quick Viking fun there's the animated short The Saga of Biorn.
Oh, one more thing: You might also enjoy Viking Empires by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen. It goes beyond the traditional end of the Viking Age into the Middle Ages and should therefore tie in nicely to your main interest in the crusades.
2. Sagas
Egils saga and Njáls saga are usually the ones that are recomennded for first time readers. They feel very modern in their narrative structures. Grettis saga is also quite good for a start. And then maybe Laxdæla saga. If you aren't specifically interested in Iceland and want to start with something that conforms more to the public picture of "Vikings" try Eiriks saga rauða, Jómsvíkinga saga or Sverris saga. But afterwards you have to read at least one Icelander saga (i.e. one of the ones I mentioned first)!
Icelandic sagas are fascinating but you have to commit to them. Don't be disappointed if a chapter begins with two pages of the family tree of a minor character! And always keep in mind that this is medieval literature: although it might look like it it is not history. These things were written in the 12th to 14th centuries, even if the take place much earlier!
Part of that doctrine was also that we would "fight until help has arrived". For the people who designed it in the early Cold War era, it was quite obvious from where that help would come. Neutrality (or more correctly non-alignment) was a pragmatic policy to ease tensions and avoid Finland being forced into the Warsaw Pact, which was a feasible scenario were Sweden to join NATO. Covertly there was a lot of cooperation with the West. Sweden, in the fifties having one of the largest air forces in the world (not per capita, in absolute numbers!), essentially provided NATO's northern flank. There was no question whose side we were on.
What then happened in the seventies was that a new generation of politicians came along who actually believed in the public declarations of absolute neutrality between the two opposing blocks. The secret plans weren't passed along from the old guys and the plans withered.
Recommended reading: Robert Dalsjö, Life-Line Lost: The Rise and Fall of 'Neutral' Sweden's Secret Reserve Option of Wartime Help from the West, ISBN 978-9173350037.
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find.
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
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>Iona Abbey, perhaps the most important Christian site in all of Britain
If there is a site to compete with Iona, it's Lindisfarne, which was attacked and destroyed by the Vikings in 793. This was a major blow to the English.
About the uniting of England, it's not that the Heptarchy joined forces to fight, but rather all the kingdoms had been overrun with the sole exception of the West Saxons. When King Alfred defeated the Vikings he established himself as overking of all England. His grandson Athelstan was the one who beat the Vikings back once and for all. The Vikings of Dublin (a town they had founded) had united with the Scots and these were defeated by Athelstan in 937. (There really was no uniting with Scotland at this point).
As for sources, pretty much any history of the Vikings will have this information. This one and this one are both good. The basic histories of Anglo-Saxon England will also have the information.
> I would be interested in reading a good history of Sweden (in English) if you have any recommendations. Websites or movies would be great too.
You got some replies about food, but I thought I'd give some tips on this one!
A History of Sweden by Hernan Lindqvist
A Journey through Swedish History by Herman Lindqvist
A history of Sweden by Lars O Lagerqvist
These are more general books about the history of Sweden, by Swedish historians. Herman Lindqvist in particular is fairly well known here as an author of popular history books. This page has a list of books about Swedish history, though I don't know the authors.
Hope you find it interesting!
Here's a book I like >>>> "Nothing to do with Islam"
Some lesser known books about the Islamification of Europe that I recommend:
East Meat
Enemy of the state
Dark Albion: Requiem for Britain
Fistfights with Muslims in Europe (better than the title suggests. Basically a travelogue of an American in Europe whom is coming to terms with a continent undergoing profound change)
Sweden in a time of Immigration: How the Sweden Democrats turned the elite into a frenzy
Norse occultism is some cool stuff. I'm not super familiar with the structure of ritual used traditionally-or if we know enough to say what total structure was-but I've got a couple of links for you.
http://www.northernpaganism.org/shrines/freya/praising-freya/invocation-to-freya.html
http://norse-mythology.org/concepts/seidr/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004G5YQNW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
These are what come to mind from what I've looked into before. I'll say that from my experience, any deity can be called upon and invoked using an image, candles and incense, a meditative relaxed state, and an official spoken invitation like the first link. Hope this helps.
>Regardless of Stalin’s belligerency, I still don’t see a cause for World War II without Hitler.
You need hitler. you ALSO need stalin. both are necessary.
>Stalin took after Hitler,
No, he didn't. Stalin was in power more than a decade before hitler.
>Stalin was more concerned with internal affairs until the opportunity for easy gains presented itself with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
No, he wasn't. There are dozens of books written on interwar diplomacy, and the USSR. you should try reading some of them.
>I can’t imagine a scenario where Stalin starts WWII.
Can't imagine? He started ww2 with hitler in actual history!
>He definitely had designs, but he had no desire to fight Britain and France, the major powers in Europe, who would undoubtedly object to Soviet invasions of Eastern Europe.
No one wants to fight, everyone hopes to get what they want without fighting. Hitler didn't think the allies would fight over poland, does that mean he didn't want a war?
Not really history, but I liked this one: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Danish-Culture-Norman-Berdichevsky-ebook/dp/B008DM2R80/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
Honestly a lot of my knowledge just comes from reading online. The Norse aspect of what I wrote comes from this site. A few books I've read that are relevant are Heather O'Donoghue's From Asgard to Valhalla which is about the development of Norse myths and their influence through time. Religions of the Ancient World I haven't read but I read a similar book by the same author (which I can't find) for a class and it was a good overview of ancient religions. Here are some books on Indo-European culture that seem reputable but I haven't read them. 1 and 2