Knowledge on the Nordics

Listen to this podcast if you are interested in finding out more about:

• Minorities in Finland;
• Myths  of homogeneity in the Nordics;
• The politicising and categorising of minorities and migrants;
•  History-writing.

Miika Tervonen, Senior Research Fellow at the Migration Institute of Finland and Docent at the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki, helps editor of nordics.info Nicola Witcombe examine these issues, challenging commonly held assumptions about state, homogeneity and migration.

Learn more about the peoples, historians and other things mentioned this podcast by going to nordics.info.

This is the eighth virtual visit around the Nordic countries in the podcast series ’The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region’.

Sounds from freesound.org including big_lorry_engine.aif by jacobsteel.

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Listen to this podcast if you want to hear more about:

• Memory studies.
• Why is our relationship with the past so important for society?
• How do we deal with different versions of the past?
• Scandinavian memory culture: the dangers of complacency.

The editor of nordics.info and Danish history student Vibeke Sandager Rønnedal interview two historians from Aarhus University and the Danish Centre for Urban History.

Read more about the podcast and what is mentioned in it by going to nordics.info.

Sounds from freesound.org including All I Did Was Wait For You by kjartan_abel and Scene Change Music by dominictreis.

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Listen to this nordics.info podcast if you are interested in finding out more about:

• The traits of the Nordic Model;
• Examples of policy successes and policy challenges in the Nordics;
• The relationship between the Nordics and the EU;
• The provision of universal services, like early years childcare in Denmark and Sweden.

Editor of nordics.info Nicola Witcombe interviews Caroline de la Porte, a European political economist and Professor at the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at Copenhagen Business School. This is the seventh virtual visit around the Nordic countries in the podcast series ’The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region’ and was recorded in April 2021.

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Listen to this podcast if you are interested in :

• How a collective mindset has been discernable in Denmark and the Nordic countries at points in history – and whether this still applies today;
• Mass education in the nineteenth century in Denmark and greater emphasis on vocational training;
• Labour market relations;
• Neoliberalism and threats to collectivism.

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her sixth virtual visit around the Nordic countries in the podcast series ’The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region’. Cathie and Nicola spoke over Zoom in March 2021.

Sound credits : freesound.org, including Lapping Waves.wav by Benboncan, and Short dance by szegvari.

Visit nordics.info for more information on this podcast.

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The interplay between popular culture and the ’real’ world is an interesting one: Can cultural products really have an effect on geopolitics? And can geopolitical actors learn from them? Robert Saunders thinks so. He is Professor in the Department of History, Politics and Geography the State University of New York and is interviewed by editor of nordics.info Nicola Witcombe. Find out more about how TV can be a tool in explaining geopolitics and historical events; and, how it is experimental ground for imagining how to deal with the uncertainty of future events, including relationships between countries and regions – and pandemics!

Sound credits: freesound.org e.g. bigmanjoe (Suspenceful Creepy Music.wav).

Visit nordics.info for more information on the works mentioned in the podcast!

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Listen to this podcast if you want to hear more about:

• The North Atlantic Islands of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands;
• Denmark-Norway colonialism in the modern-day Caribbean and Ghana and its legacies;
• The Greenlandic flag, 'Erfalasorput', and how it is used to respond to the Danish flag, the 'Dannebrog';
• Contemporary cultural and political debates on racism, including about: Is Scandinavian ‘colourblindness’ a good thing?;
• Breaking down the perception of the Nordics as innocent or exceptional.

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe on her fifth virtual visit around the Nordic countries in the podcast series The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The sixth in the series is with  Cathie Jo Martin, Professor in Political Science at the Boston University.

More information about the podcast can be found on nordics.info.

Sound credits : freesound.org, including Lapping Waves.wav by Benboncan, and Short dance by szegvari.

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Listen to this nordics.info podcast on the social, political and literary movement from around 1870 to 1900 in Scandinavia! Dubbed the Modern Breakthrough, it was a backlash against conservatism, both culturally and politically, and led to countless challenging and fascinating pieces of fictional and non-fictional literature and art. Authors were like celebrities, propounding social justice for the poor, emancipation and rights for women, taking up naturalist ideas post-Darwin, and kicking against the overriding religion.

Spoiler alert!: If you listen to this podcast, several endings of famous Scandinavian novels will be disclosed!

Sound credits from freesound.org including oboe horn tune & audience r.aif by IEDlabs and Historical Museum lounge area ambience.wav by Halfofthesky.  

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Listen to this podcast if you are interested in finding out more about:

• Contemporary Icelandic literature to read in English translation;
• Currents in Icelandic and Nordic literature on rewriting the past;
• The exoticising of Iceland and the North; and,
• Nordic noir as a category in literature and film.

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe on her fourth virtual visit around the Nordic countries in the podcast series The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. Gunnþórunn and Nicola spoke on 24th February 2021 when they were frequently interrupted by earthquakes.

The 5th in the series is with  Lill-Ann Körber, Professor at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University in Denmark about Nordic postcolonialism, amongst other things.

Find out more on nordics.info.

Sound credits : freesound.org.  

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Children being exposed to a certain level of risk is not always seen as a bad thing in the Nordics; exposure can give children the tools to deal with risk and help them to become resilient and independent. The attitude of caregivers, teachers and children in the Nordics to online risk also reflects this approach - while elsewhere in the world a more stringent view is often taken. How we tackle children’s online lives and behaviours is rather complex and is influenced by the cultural norms of where you live, the role of schools, as well as how policymakers and classification institutions decide to regulate in the area.

This podcast addresses everything to do with children's online behaviour, taking Norway and a range of other Nordic and non-Nordic countries as examples. On the way, it answers the following questions: 
- Is screen time harmful per se? 
- How do we protect children from online harm? 
- How has Covid-19 and online teaching affected children’s online lives? 
- And what approaches are prevalent in the Nordic countries?

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her virtual visit around the Nordic countries, this time to Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo to discover the answer to these questions.

This podcast was recorded in February 2021 and is the third in the series: The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The fourth in the series is an interview with      Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland. She will be talking about Icelandic literature, Nordic Noir and how writers and cultural commentators frame the past - and how they help people to digest global crises.

Sound credits from freesound.org including mechanical keyboard sound by TolerableDruid6. 

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This podcast tackles a wide-range of factors about the educational systems of the Nordic countries, focusing primarily on Sweden and comparisons with Finland. On the way, it answers the following questions: 

• Why does the Finnish education system have such a good reputation around the world? 
• After decades of reform, is the Swedish education system in crisis? 
• How does decision-making and the politics around education in Finland and Sweden differ and how is it similar? 
•  What role do schools and teachers play in the creation of our 'mental maps'? A term usually used by cultural geographers, mental maps encompass many different dimensions of our world view: from an awareness of our country and region’s place in the world, to our view of history and where we sit on an imaginary timeline.
• How is all of this influenced by national politicians and institutional systems, and even the international dimension? 

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her virtual visit around the Nordic countries, this time to Janne Holmén, Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Uppsala University to discover the answer to these questions. Janne is from the Åland Islands and this has influenced his research interests.

This podcast was recorded in February 2021 and is the second in the series: The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The third in the series is an interview with Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor in the Department of Education and Media at Oslo University in Norway. She will be talking about childhood in the Nordics and the online lives of children and young people.

Sound credits from freesound.org including school break noise outdoor.wav by Libra222.

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