Nordic Literature: A comparative history is a multi-volume comparative analysis of the literature of the Nordic region. Bringing together the literature of Finland, continental Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Sápmi), and the insular region (Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands), each volume of this three-volume project adopts a new frame through which one can recognize and analyze significant clusters of literary practice. This first volume, Spatial nodes, devotes its attention to the changing literary figurations of space by Nordic writers from medieval to contemporary times. Organized around the depiction of various “scapes” and spatial practices at home and abroad, this approach to Nordic literature stretches existing notions of temporally linear, nationally centered literary history and allows questions of internal regional similarities and differences to emerge more strongly. The productive historical contingency of the “North” as a literary space becomes clear in this close analysis of its literary texts and practices.

How did Nordic culture become associated with the fuzzy brand “cool”, as by default? In Exploring NORDIC COOL in Literary History twenty-one scholars in collaboration question the seemingly natural fit between “Nordic” and “Cool” by investigating its variegated trajectories through literary history, from medieval legends to digital poetry. At the same time, the elasticity and polysemy of the word “cool” become a means to explore Nordic literary history afresh. It opens up a rich diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches within a regional framework and reveals hitherto unseen links between familiar and less familiar tracks and sites. Following diverse paths of “Nordic cool” in respect to – among other things – nature, survival, love, whiteness, style, economics, heroism and colonialism, this book challenges all-too-recognisable narratives, and underlines the sheer knowledge potential of literary historical research.