This volume is a significant contribution to the study of contemporary European culture. It explores the political, social and aesthetic impact of modern sport on the Northern European Nordic communities. Its concern is the relationship between Nordic culture, Nordic nations, changing Nordic attitudes to time, space and the body and the related evolution of specific Nordic visions and traditions of sport as an integral component of cultural similarity and synthesis.

Sport, Outdoor Life and the Nordic World explores the Nordic model of sport and outdoor life with respect to such issues as sport facilities, mountain guiding, women and ethnic minorities, urban planning, anti-doping, health, elite sport coaching and leadership, and the globalization of sport. The aims of the volume are twofold. First, it advances knowledge of Nordic sport and outdoor life, as important fields of social activity in their own rights. Second, it enhances the understanding of the ‘Nordic model’ of society, and the ways in which this is constructed, explored and challenged within and through sport and outdoor life activities. In doing so, the contributors explore a range of key themes, notably: how modern Nordic sport and outdoor life activities emerged and are organized through specific social policies; how they may challenge or harbour forms of social exclusion, particularly in regard to gender or minority populations; how they are affected by, and respond to, deviant practices such as doping; how they may contribute to alleviating social problems; and how they confront major structural challenges and changes, such as the impacts of globalization and the continuing dominance of neoliberal economic policies. Interdisciplinary in approach, Sport, Outdoor Life and the Nordic World is essential reading for those studying Nordic sports and societies, and will also appeal to students, academics and wider readers with interests in sport studies, sociology, social policy, cultural studies, anthropology and public health. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The Nordic countries have long been subject to certain idealised, even utopian imaginaries, particularly with regard to images of pristine nature and the societal ideals of democracy, equality and education. On the other hand, such projections inevitably invite dissent, irony and intimations of the utopia’s dark underside. Things may yet take, or may have already taken, a dystopic course. The present volume offers twelve contributions on utopias and dystopias in Nordic literature and culture. Geographically, the articles cover the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as the autonomous area of Greenland. Through the articles’ varied subjects — ranging from avant-garde literature and long poems to noir TV-series, young adult fiction, popular historiography, and political discourse in literature outside of Norden — the volume brings forth a historically rich, multi-layered picture of social, cultural and environmental imagination in the Nordic countries. Nordic Utopias and Dystopias is thus of interest not only to specialists in dystopian and utopian research but more broadly to scholars of literature and culture, and the political and social sciences, especially but not exclusively in the Nordic context.

With essays covering all aspects of sports history, this volume is a tribute to the scholarship of Professor Tony Mangan. Regarded by many as a pioneer and mentor, Professor Mangan's foundational work has sustained the field for decades.