Between Nordism and Nationalism: The Methods of the Norden Associations’ Educational Efforts, 1919–1965

Henrik Åström Elmersjö

doi:10.36368/njedh.v7i2.200

Abstract

The Norden Associations (föreningarna Norden) were established in 1919 with the intention of promoting understanding and cooperation between the Nordic countries. The definition of “Norden” was negotiated from the very beginning, and Icelandic and Finnish associations were not established until the 1920s. Promoting understanding and cooperation was very much considered an educational effort, and Norden was imagined within educational efforts sponsored by the associations. In this regard, the associations had predecessors in the Nordic schoolteacher meetings that dated back to the age of Scandinavism in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Norden Associations created special school boards in the 1920s in order to both promote a more Nordic approach in some subjects—mainly language, geography, and history—and to promote cooperation between the countries, with the youth as the catalyst for a more Nordistic future. This article looks into how the Norden Associations imagined a Nordic school, in which a Nordic sentiment was established, and how this imagination related to the reality of the nationalistic school and to ideas of broader international cooperation, between which the “Nordic idea” has always been sandwiched. The article shows how the methods used effectively hindered the imagination of Norden and the “Nordic idea” beyond the scope of cooperation between nations.

Highlights

The construction of “Norden” as a cultural unit goes back a long way and has been linked to transformations of European concepts of unity and division.[1]
This article looks into how the Norden Associations imagined a Nordic school, in which a Nordic sentiment was established, and how this imagination related to the reality of the nationalistic school and to ideas of broader international cooperation, between which the “Nordic idea” has always been sandwiched
As with the Nordic teacher meetings in the nineteenth century, less attention was given to the Nordic idea, and more to the meetings themselves, with hopes of learning about each other: Regarding the youth, the [Swedish school-] committee reckon that summer courses should be held in a Swedish town, where conditions are favourable, with school children from one other Nordic country, with an agenda in accordance with the courses for German children in Sweden, that was successfully realised last summer [...]

Summary

Introduction

The construction of “Norden” as a cultural unit goes back a long way and has been linked to transformations of European concepts of unity and division.[1]. The interwar period The overall “working programme” (arbetsprogram) that the Swedish Norden Association launched in 1919 focused on “deepening the knowledge about Danish and Norwegian conditions in various fields.”[34] In the associations’ joint membership journal Nordens kalender, a text about the relationship between the Nordic and the national tried to pinpoint what the “national” meant in a Nordic context: “Our own national feelings will only grow more pure and real if they develop a feature of Nordic affinity.”[35] The Norwegian minister of foreign affairs, Halvdan Koht, wrote in the same journal a few years later regarding his work as a minister: For Norway it might sometimes be natural to cooperate with Sweden and Finland, other times with Denmark or Iceland.

41 Norden

43 The textbook revision has been discussed elsewhere

Conclusion