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Short Synopsis
Scandinavians is a personal investigation, with award-winning author Robert Ferguson as the ideal companion as he explores wide-ranging topics such as the power and mystique of Scandinavian women, from the Valkyries to the Vikings; from Nora and Hedda to Garbo and Bergman.

Full Synopsis
Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: we fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and their healthy outdoor lifestyle; we glut ourselves on their crime fiction; even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavia, and how accurate is our picture of life in Scandinavia today?

Scandinavians follows a chronological progression across the Northern centuries: the Vendel era of Swedish prehistory; the age of the Vikings; the Christian conversions of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland; the unified Scandinavian state of the late Middle Ages; the sea-change of the Reformation; the kingdom of Denmark-Norway; King Gustav Adolphus and the age of Sweden’s greatness; the cultural golden age of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Munch; the impact of the Second World War; Scandinavia’s postwar social democratic nirvana; and the terror attacks of Anders Behring Breivik.

"Narrator Michael Page brings his full complement of language gifts to the task of narrating this wide-ranging audiobook." ---AudioFile

"Ferguson takes readers on a leisurely jaunt through the collective, interconnected histories of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. . . . combines the factual and the intimate." ---Publishers Weekly

Scandinavians is essential reading.” ---Sir Richard Eyre, former director of the National Theatre, London

“There can be few outsiders who know as much about the Scandinavians as Robert Ferguson.” ---Liv Ullman

"A delightful history in which the author truly captures 'the soul of the North.'" ---Kirkus

"Delightfully free-roaming . . . [Scandinavians] offers . . . an engaging, layered look into a culture complex enough both to produce stylish rain gear and to embrace the foul weather that necessitates it." ---New York Times
Kirkus Bestseller

Kirkus Review

Scandinavians

In Search of the Soul of the North

Author Robert Ferguson

Narrated by Michael Page

Publication date Jun 27, 2017

Running time 15 hrs 22 min

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