An updated edition of the definitive history of Scandinavia over the past five centuries Despite certain distinctions and differences, the lands of Scandinavia, or Norden—Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands—are united by bonds of culture, language, and geography, and by a shared history that comes richly to life in this landmark work.Now in an expanded, updated edition, this authoritative chronicle of five centuries of Scandinavian history incorporates the geopolitical developments and momentous events that have marked the Nordic world in recent decades.   Scandinavia since 1500 situates the region’s political history within the traditional European chronology—in which the long “modern” period is subdivided into the Renaissance, early modern, modern, and contemporary.Within this framework, Byron J. Nordstrom traces the various ways in which economic, social, and cultural ideas and practices have come to Scandinavia from abroad, only to be modified and recas