Because of its history, art, and natural and cultural landscapes, Italy has been a popular destination for North-European travellers since the age of the Grand Tour. Yet, literary images of Italy are not all linked to the tradition of the journey to this country and cannot be labelled as a manifestation of Northerners’ yearning for the Southern sun. The corpus of critical literature which deals with Italy in Nordic literatures is very wide but also fragmentary. While many scholars have written about this topic and chiefly on the relations between individual Scandinavian literatures or well-known authors – such as Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf and Hans Christian Andersen – and Italy, few have emphasised their variety, plurality, and complexity. With its comparative approach, this study casts a new light on a selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century representations of Italy and presents some of these Nordic Italies. Taking into account texts of different genres – poetry, drama and novel – and focusing on theories of representation, genre, and space, this book examines complex and heterogeneous literary representations that cannot be reduced to a single stereotype. In these texts, Italy emerges both as a set of physical spaces and as a series of metaphorical concepts. How are these Italian spaces and identities constructed and what do they stand for? What forms does the broad concept of Italianness take in these literary works? How are the Italian settings and characters, as well as the aspects of Italian politics, history, society, culture, and folklore that populate so many literary texts, shaped and combined? Is there a relationship between specific literary genres and the way in which Italy is represented? These are only some of the questions addressed by this study, which demonstrates how Nordic representations of Italy express much more than unanimous praise for the sun, idyllic landscapes, ruins, and mandolin players.

BOOK DESCRIPTION "New Nordic Meets Old Italian", offers 45 gourmet vegan and gluten free pasta sauceswith full color photos that are perfectly paired with dry pasta. There are unexpected similarities between Italian cooking and the New Nordic style; both kitchens make a cult of freshness, the seasons and simplicity. Nordics always consider seasonal, local and sustainable food like Italians; purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics, are aimed at bringing out the pure original flavour. Scandinavian food is simple. When you work with the very best produce, there's no need to over complicate it.We call it husmanskost - farmer's fare. It's natural and honest, made with the staple produce found on the land. Besides creative touches to the traditional recipes and some simple vegan cheese recipes to elevate your dishes, you will also find some gastronomic encounters between Italy and Sweden. Author tried to convey more vividly by gourmet plates such as marinated beluga in glögg-Sweden's festive beverage- a kind of mulled wine served with spaghetti and celeriac sauce. It is just fantastic with distinctly different levels of spicy sweetness of glögg with cherris and an earthy dish of celeriac. "New Nordic Meets Old Italian" also focuses on gourmet pasta sauces with unfamiliar edible plants that are prepared based on Italian cooking traditions, perfectly paired with dried pasta shapes. The aim of this book is to encourage chefs to create a delicious plant based pasta menu in using 100% plants in the kitchen. There is a great range of unfamiliar plants that grow in every climate, though many of them are still unexplored in their culinary potential. Author Nazli Develi heartily believes that "New Nordic Meets Old Italian" will assist you to raise awareness about the tastes their environment offers will allow them to see it through different eyes.

Lone Scherfig was the first of a number of women directors to take up the challenge of Dogme, the back-to-basics, manifesto-based, rule-governed, and now globalized film initiative introduced by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in 1995. Entitled Italiensk for begyndere (Italian for Beginners), Scherfig's Dogme film transformed this already accomplished filmmaker into one of Europe's most noteworthy women directors. Danish and international critics lavished praise on Scherfig and her film, and their reactions harmonized with those of festival juries. Battered by life, but by no means defeated or destroyed, the characters in Italian for Beginners are all in touch at some deep intuitive level with the truth that is the film's basic message: that happiness and a sense of self-worth are sustained by love--whether romantic love or that of a community of like-minded people. The film struck an important chord with viewers precisely because it took Dogme in a new direction, one that reflects Scherfig's sensibilities and preferences as a woman. The book includes the Dogme manifesto and draws on interviews with the filmmaker as well as with the cast and crew. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7SGfrIHGA

Introduction to Nordic Cultures is an innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to Nordic history, cultures and societies from medieval times to today. The textbook spans the whole Nordic region, covering historical periods from the Viking Age to modern society, and engages with a range of subjects: from runic inscriptions on iron rings and stone monuments, via eighteenth-century scientists, Ibsen’s dramas and turn-of-the-century travel, to twentieth-century health films and the welfare state, nature ideology, Greenlandic literature, Nordic Noir, migration, ‘new’ Scandinavians, and stereotypes of the Nordic. The chapters provide fundamental knowledge and insights into the history and structures of Nordic societies, while constructing critical analyses around specific case studies that help build an informed picture of how societies grow and of the interplay between history, politics, culture, geography and people. Introduction to Nordic Cultures is a tool for understanding issues related to the Nordic region as a whole, offering the reader engaging and stimulating ways of discovering a variety of cultural expressions, historical developments and local preoccupations. The textbook is a valuable resource for undergraduate students of Scandinavian and Nordic studies, as well as students of European history, culture, literature and linguistics.

The book includes the Dogme manifesto and draws on interviews with the filmmaker as well as with the cast and crew. --Book Jacket.

This book seeks to reassess and shed new light on pan-nationalisms in general and on Scandinavianism/Nordism in particular, by seeing them as possible futures and as interconnected ideas and practices across and beyond Europe. An actor and practice oriented approach is applied at the expense of more essentialist categorizations of what pan-nationalism is, or is not to underline both the synchronic and diachronic diversity of various pan-national movements. A range of expert international scholars discuss encounters, transfers, similarities and differences among pan-movements in Norden and Europe based on a broad empirical material, focusing on Scandinavianism/Nordism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turanism, pan-Germanism and Greater Netherlandism, and the position of Britishness in Great Britain. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of nationalism, European history, European studies and Scandinavian studies, history, social science, political geography, civil society and literary studies.