Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden today all enjoy a reputation for strong labour movements, which in turn are widely seen as part of a distinctive regional approach to politics, collective bargaining and welfare. But as this volume demonstrates, narratives of the so-called "Nordic model" can obscure the fact that experiences of work and the fortunes of organized labour have varied widely throughout the region and across different historical periods. Together, the essays collected here represent an ambitious intervention in labour historiography and European history, exploring themes such as work, unions, politics and migration from the early modern period to the twenty-first century.

Silke Neunsinger is Associate Professor in Economic History and Director of Research at the Swedish Labor Movement Archives and Library. Her research has been concerned with feminist labour history, the history of social movements and methodology. She is currently working on a global history of equal remuneration.

List of Illustrations
List of Tables and Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Labour, Unions and Politics in the Nordic Countries, c.1700-2000
Mary Hilson, Silke Neunsinger, Iben Vyff, Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir

Chapter 1. Connecting Labour: Organizing Swedish Ironmaking in an Atlantic Context
Göran Rydén and Chris Evans

Chapter 2. 'Forest Men': How Scandinavian Loggers' Understandings of 'Real Men' and 'Real Work' are Rooted in Personal Narratives and Popular Culture about Forest Life
Ingar Kaldal

Chapter 3. Diverse, rather than Desperate: Housewifization and Industrial Home Work in Sweden, 1906-1912
Malin Nilsson

Chapter 4. Housemaids of the Past and Au Pairs of Today in Denmark: Do They Have Anything in Common?
Helle Stenum

Chapter 5. Trade Unionism in Denmark, 1870-1940 - from the Perspective of Work
Knud Knudsen

Chapter 6. Labour Migration and Industrial Relations: Recruitment of Foreign-Born Workers to the Swedish Engineering Industry after the Second World War
Johan Svanberg

Chapter 7. Land Agitation and the Rise of Agrarian Socialism in South-Western Finland, 1899-1907
Sami Suodenjoki

Chapter 8. Strike in Finland, Revolution in Russia: The Role of Workers in the 1905 General Strike in the Grand Duchy of Finland
Marko Tikka

Chapter 9. Radicalism or Integration: Socialist and Liberal Parties in Norway, 1890-1914
Einar A. Terjesen

Chapter 10. 'Norden' as a Transnational Space in the 1930s: Negotiated Consensus of 'Nordicness' in the Nordic Cooperation Committee of the Labour Movement
Mirja Österberg

Chapter 11. Facing the Nation: Nordic Communists and their National Contexts, from the 1920s and into the Cold War
Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir

Chapter 12. Tallinn - Stockholm - Hamburg - Copenhagen - Oslo: The Northern Dimension of the Comintern's Global Network and Underground Activities, 1920-1940
Holger Weiss

Chapter 13. Danish Cadres at the Moscow Party School, 1958-1960
Chris Holmsted Larsen

Index