Labour, Unions and Politics under the North Star: The Nordic Countries, 1700-2000

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden today all enjoy a reputation for strong labour movements, which in turn are widely seen as part of a distinctive regional approach to politics, collective bargaining and welfare. But as this volume demonstrates, narratives of the so-called “Nordic model” can obscure the fact that experiences of work and the fortunes of organized labour have varied widely throughout the region and across different historical periods. Together, the essays collected here represent an ambitious intervention in labour historiography and European history, exploring themes such as work, unions, politics and migration from the early modern period to the twenty-first century.

Mary Hilson is Professor of History at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is the author of Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective: Britain and Sweden 1880-1920 (2006) and The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (2008).

Silke Neunsinger is Associate Professor in Economic History and Director of Research at the Swedish Labor Movement Archives and Library. Her research has been concerned with feminist labour history, the history of social movements and methodology. She is currently working on a global history of equal remuneration.

Iben Vyff is Head of Communication at Elsinore Museums, Denmark. Her research has been concerned with the cultural turn in Cold War studies, Americanization and gender. She is co-author of Dansk Skolehistorie: Hverdag, vilkår og visioner gennem 500 år, which received the History Book of the Year Award from the Danish History Council in 2015.