| Summary: | In travel narratives by 19th-century visitors, the Nordic North generally emerges as pre-modern and uncivilized. Yet the most widespread view of the Nordic countries today is that they are socially progressive, liberal, and politically advanced. The connection between present-day socio-political discourses and cultural discourses of the past thus seems to be very weak or even absent. When a micro-perspective is applied, however, it becomes clear that the idea of a northern modernity has a long history. Current interpretations of the region as a site of progress do not break with previous depictions but constitute the continuation of a counter-discourse that was always present. Nineteenth-century works frequently contain both images of fairy-tale forests and descriptions of modern cities, and sometimes manage to combine the idea of the demanding, masculine-coded North with a view that foregrounds women’s emancipation and opportunities in society. To function as an alternative and an inspiration, however, the region needs to be modern in a different way than London or Paris. It could be said that the modernity the Nordic North was made to represent in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century built on the same features that led to nostalgic interpretations of the region.
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