Prelude. A season in Hell: Copenhagen 1969 -- Stones -- The conversion of the Icelanders -- Amleth, Luther and the last priest: the Reformation in Scandinavia -- The King of the past: Frederik VII of Denmark -- The Vasa ship: Sweden's age of greatness -- Abductions: the war between the Danes and Algerians -- The short sweet rule of Johann Friedrich Struensee -- Taking God at His word: Søren Kierkegaard and Olav Fiskvik -- The loneliness of the long-distance explorer -- Interlude: Ibsen's Ghosts -- The emigrants -- World War II: the Scandinavian experience -- The power of Scandinavian women -- Dagny Juel and the invention of melancholy -- Malexander -- Oslo 2016

A journey of discovery though two millennia of Scandinavia's history, culture and society, "told with deep knowledge and an intoxicating passion" (BBC). -- Scandinavians is also 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. This digressive technique is familiar from the writings of W.G. Sebald, and in Ferguson's hands it is deployed with particular felicity, accessibility, and deftness, richly illuminating our understanding of modern Scandinavia, its society, politics, culture, and temperament