Tag Archives: Norway

Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud (eds.), Denmark and The New North Atlantic: Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2020)

Book review (editorial review), , , , ,

Denmark and The New North Atlantic – Narratives and Memories in a Former Empire presents a critical interdisciplinary study of a region marked by Danish imperialism and today affected by a renewed interest in the Arctic: the North Atlantic (i.e., coastal Norway, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands).

Edited by Kirsten Thisted and Ann-Sofie Gremaud, this two-volume book investigates how geopolitical and climatic changes reshape power dynamics and relationships in the North Atlantic. Throughout the book, historians, ethnographers, culture and communication scholars, literary theorists, and art historians from universities in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, and Norway interrogate past narratives, emerging discourses and current relations in the nations of the North Atlantic.

The first section of the book offers a broad overview of the author’s assessment and help contextualise the following analyses. After briefly explaining that the North Atlantic is a porous and situated concept, Thisted and Gremaud highlight the influence of the past over the present and (perceived) future of the region. Indeed, political and emotional relations set during the Danish Empire seem deeply entrenched. While the emergence of the Arctic on the international scene contributes to their renegotiation, they appear to continue affecting current dynamics. Thisted and Gremaud further argue that these past relations and influences, often charged with racism, sexism and discrimination, are often overlooked. With this research, the authors thus hope to expose and reflect on these narratives and to participate in enabling a move forward.

Having set out the book’s objective, the second section synthesises the history of the Danish Empire in the North Atlantic and the development of distinct nations in the region. By replacing the national narratives of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands in light of their relationship with the Danish Empire, the authors question – or at least nuance – the dominant narratives, allowing us to better comprehend current discourses and dynamics.

Following these rather general sections, the subsequent parts of the book draw on politics, ideology, art, literature, ecology and gender tropes to study the evolving narratives of the North Atlantic region. By recalling former power relations and past constructions, the different sections contextualise and question present developments and discourses in the nations of the North Atlantic, at regional, national, and global levels. Similar research questions are applied to the different nations, highlighting common features in the North Atlantic and interrogating political, social and cultural asymmetries. Section 3 thus analyses geographical perceptions and definitions of the North Atlantic, underlining how these are situated. Section 4 investigates the shaping of collective identities by assessing narratives of purity and authenticity and is directly complemented by Section 5, which questions gendered discourses and practices, by focusing on narratives of impurity or hybridity. Section 6 reflects on representations of the past as definers of an idealised future and Section 7, focused on political considerations and the use of natural resources, plays a concluding role by summarising that past dynamics and hierarchies continue to shape the present.

A few characteristics make this publication especially valuable. First, throughout the book, the authors use historical and local examples, especially artistic productions, to feed their analyses. These numerous inputs of local narratives make the reflections particularly relevant, founded and meaningful. It is very pleasant to read an academic work with such a diverse array of examples. While the different sections of the book tackle various subjects, the systematic use of local narratives connect them and make the book a coherent production.

Secondly, the application of a post-colonial lens to the narratives of the North Atlantic countries, and not only of Greenland, is a sensible and pertinent choice that also connects the different sections. As a matter of fact, Icelandic narratives are rarely analysed in light of the country’s colonial history, yet the authors here show how necessary it is to do so. By highlighting the countries’ shared colonial past and its influence on the post-colonial present; and by applying the same interrogations to Greenlandic, Icelandic, and Faroese narratives, the authors recognise and overcome the asymmetric hierarchies set by Danish imperialism.

Thirdly, the authors often take the time to clarify the academic concepts they use, even though most of them have been created and defined by other scholars. This explanatory process allows the reader to truly understand the book’s theoretical framework and the authors’ vision behind their analyses. As such, it adds to the meaningfulness of the book and underlines the authors’ desire to produce intelligible research.

On the other hand, the discussion around coastal Norway could have gained in being better incorporated to overall reflection. While Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands are almost always integrated into the analyses, coastal Norway only appears sporadically. Although it is explained that the North Atlantic has porous borders, it would have been interesting to consider narratives from coastal Norway more often, especially as many themes would have been applicable and relevant to that region.

Furthermore, Section 3 and its effort to analyse past and present geographical perceptions of the North Atlantic is underwhelming. Indeed, part of the development seems too conceptualised, thereby missing to represent felt geographies. While most of the book’s analysis is robust and backed by well-grounded arguments and examples, Section 3’s focus on the “Blues” – an emerging field of research which considers the ocean as an integral part of modern geography – as a means of analysing the North Atlantic’s relationship with its environment feels blurry and unfinished. Nevertheless, the themes approached in this section were interesting, and it will be important to follow up on the emergence of the “Blues” as an academic field in the coming years.

In sum, this book covers a very wide spectrum of notions and effectively manages to give the reader a general understanding of the North Atlantic’s current dynamics, hierarchies and discourses internally, regionally and globally. By constantly using local and concrete examples, the authors generally avoid developing a theoretical analysis with little meaning outside of the academic sphere. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the authors pinpoint the pervasiveness of the imperialist project in the North Atlantic nations. Finally, by highlighting the lasting effects of the asymmetrical power relations set out by the Danish Empire in the region, the authors successfully bring attention to deeply entrenched issues while avoiding any deterministic projections and recognising the agency of its inhabitants.

Günther Handl and Kristoffer Svendsen (eds.), Managing the Risk of Offshore Oil and Gas Accidents: The International Legal Dimension (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2020)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Managing the Risk of Offshore Oil and Gas Accidents: The International Legal Dimension is a book from the Edward Elgar’s New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law Series. It is structured around the assessment of domestic and regional legal concepts regarding safety, liability and compensation for harm, and is divided in three Parts containing topics consisting of one or several Chapters.

Part I is on prevention and reduction of harm. Without restricting itself only to the offshore industry, Topic/Chapter 1 acknowledges the deficiencies of risk management by considering State and stakeholder involvement in corporate governance and concludes that transparency is one of the most important factors for improving it.

Topic 2 is on regulating the safety of offshore oil and gas operations. Chapter 2.1 is on promoting uniformity in international governance. This is achieved by discussing the prescriptive (Malaysia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia) and performance-based regulatory approaches, and the tendency of moving towards hybrid control (USA, Norway, UK, Australia). The reasons for the latter – that government agencies are not well-suited to inspect the quality of the industry even though obliged to ‘audit the auditor’s auditor’ – are established in Chapter 2.2 using as role model the ongoing changes in the USA following the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident. Although international law has no provisions on promoting uniform health and safety standards and that the hybrid system allows for easy harmonisation, it is also possible in States promoting prescriptive regulation.

Topic/Chapter 3 discusses the need to amend treaty law on contingency planning and response (CPR) regarding transboundary pollution through reviewing the vertical levels of governance: treaty (UNCLOS and OPRC), regional (Arctic) and bilateral (Norwegian-Russian) legislation.

Unlike it, Topic 4 is on national and regional CPR – Chapter 4.1 reviews the amendments and implementation of EU law after DWH accident; Chapter 4.2 is on MOSPA  and the 1994 Russian-Norwegian Agreement in the Barents Sea; Chapter 4.3 is on national and interstate CPR of the Arctic by the USA, Canada and Greenland; Chapter 4.4 is chiefly on the Mediterranean, although also referring to the other marine areas – in Europe, the Arab peninsula, Africa, the Pacific, the North East Atlantic and the Caribbean.

The approaches in Topic 4 differ in depth of research. While some might be used for referencing (the regional agreements in Chapter 4.4), others describe the peculiarities of national governance (Greenland in Chapter 4.3). However, all are quite detailed in considering the impact on stakeholders and their authors agree on: the insufficiency in harmonisation, the extant high fragmentation, and the low levels of joint decision-making, thus urging continued cooperation.

Topic/Chapter 5 is on cooperation in marine delimitation and exploitation of transboundary deposits agreements (unitisation treaties, framework agreements and joint development agreements) for avoiding transboundary accidents. The review of several regional and bilateral agreements shows that it is impossible to categorise them. However, diversity also offers a range of options to choose from in order to meet States’ specific objectives.

Part II is on liability and compensation of loss. Chapter 6, describing the 2009 Montara and 2010 DWH accidents, shows the necessity of introducing a treaty law on transboundary losses. States prefer to channel liability to the operator which, unfortunately, is not a panacea, and additional measures for ameliorating the situation are proposed.

Topic 7 is on the most contentious losses that may occur following a pollution accident. Chapter 7.1 is on pure economic loss criticising the method for calculating DWH claims and an alternative is offered. Chapter 7.2 is on pure environmental damage. Unlike pure economic loss, it relates to collective rights and is also difficult to calculate. Treaty law is unclear about who is to be liable. However, certain US and EU laws could be used as a model in amending it.

Since the US are the place of greatest concern for risk managers in the offshore petroleum industry, Topic/Chapter 8 considers when punitive damages are granted. The conclusion is that that they are not quite popular among judges.

Topic/Chapter 9 is on liability insurance in the upstream operations – of the contractors, for well control, rigs and offshore vessels – and the issues of subrogation and business interruption insurance as developed by the London insurance market under English law. And although in 2015 the legislation was amended, the parties are still to be aware that renegotiating the standard terms might affect them negatively.

Part III is on claims processing. While Topic/Chapter 10 is on the role the CLC/FUND Conventions have in resolving pollution claims from carriage of petroleum by sea, Chapter 11.1 is on DWH litigation and Chapter 11.2 on compensation following the Montara accident. The CLC/FUND Conventions are unrelated to seabed petroleum extraction, whose solutions on liability may be completely different. The DWH proceedings describe the consolidation of claims and the distribution of the fund established by BP. Regardless of the procedural and substantive flaws, the settlement of claims has been substantially successful and its experience could be instructive for future oil spills. Unlike DWH, Montara looks from a broader perspective – against whom and where the transboundary and national victims could claim. Thus, the difficulties which the transboundary claimants have encountered when they brought their claim in the Australian court against the operator have been recognised.

Topic/Chapter 12 is on the development of mass tort litigation in Europe. After pinpointing the differences between the continental and US common law systems, the shared features of several European class action cases are discussed – the role of State institutions, preference for individual litigation, and the European (national and supranational) procedural laws. Thus, the authors show what amendments have been undertaken in order to make class litigation more attractive in Europe.

There is no way to disagree with the editors that this book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the transnational dimension of the petroleum activities by looking at harm prevention and post-accident management of risk.  The lack of references in the table of contents for a particular law does not mean that scholarship has not considered it in detail or that its review has not been spread throughout the Chapters (e.g., MOSPA or the US law). Also, the missing acknowledgement of relevant existing legislation, such as the one pertaining to Danish-Canadian relations,[1] shaping as well the Greenlandic obligations due to its colonial past, does not decrease the quality of its research. In addition, the review of recent caselaw and the list of major accidents in Chapter 9 make it a good reference for legal academia at large. Furthermore, by encompassing different levels of governance, the book stresses that States and international organisations need to be more proactive in finding common solutions to the existing problems.

[1] Agreement for Cooperation between Denmark and Canada Relating to the Marine  Environment (Copenhagen, 26.08.1983)

What Are These Countries Doing Here? Analyzing Transparency in the Current Flag of Convenience Regime and Their Impact on Shipping in the Arctic

New double-blind peer-reviewed article, , , , , , ,

One of the shipping industry’s most systemic issues is the lack of regulation regarding Flags of Convenience (FOCs). Ships with FOCs “are ships registered under the maritime laws of a country which is not the home of the country of the ships; owners, because the country of registry offers low tax rates and/or leniency in crew and safety requirements.”[1] This lack of enforcement and regulation is made worse even worse for vulnerable environments such as the Arctic[2] In the Arctic and Sub-Arctic States, the International Maritime Organization and the Arctic Council face the challenge of controlling and regulating these vessels under foreign flags that transit through Arctic routes. According to the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Art. 24, para 1(b): “[…] the coastal State shall not: discriminate in form or in fact against the ships of any State or against ships carrying cargoes to, from or on behalf of any State,”[3] meaning all flags shall be accepted unless it is proven that vessels do not comply with the international regulations in force at that time. Furthermore, as States considered FOCs are the largest carriers of gross tonnage in the world,[4] they play a pivotal role in decision-making and the creation of treaties and conventions established under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and other relevant maritime bodies. Therefore, the lack of good governance from these States is translated into the international shipping regulatory framework and then put into practice by the industry.

 

Introduction

Because of FOCs[5] ship owners have the flexibility to choose where to register their vessels based on cost, convenience and the international and domestic regulations that would govern their operations, including those that transit the Arctic.[6] “Nevertheless, this freedom is sometimes abused and somehow ship owners end up in the hands of flag states that are incapable of enforcing international and national jurisdictions over their ships. Once again, these failed flag states are what are referred to as the FOCs.”[7] To show this lack of transparency, the authors set about to register a ship through an FOC for a ship they did not own and also show data showing unregulated, non-transparent behavior via registration already ongoing in the Arctic. This contribution will follow two previous contributions to Nordicum-Mediterraneum as it “will use the definition of transparency provided by Rachael Lorna Johnstone and Hjálti Ómar Ágústsson, as these authors evaluate transparency according to the ease of accessing information and the quality of this information.”[8] Therefore, for the authors’ experiment, “transparency is evaluated according to the ease of accessing information, its quality, and the timeliness of disclosure.”[9] The authors also support the Governance for Sustainable Human Development, the United Nations Development Programme (“UNDP”) definition of good governance, which “defines good governance as, among other things, participatory, transparent and accountable as well as effective, equitable and as promoting the rule of law.”[10]

In Section II, the authors will briefly outline the current regime’s failure in controlling FOCs regarding criminal, environmental and labor standards. In Section III, the authors focus specifically on the good-governance criterion of transparency in three FOC countries when it came to registering a ship called the Stena Nordica:  Liberia, Honduras and Panama. The authors compare these findings to the high-quality vessel registration of the Arctic state of Norway and how that relates to issues within the Arctic such as current violations within the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in Section IV. Section V will briefly consider three policy recommendations for the 8 Artic States of the Arctic Council to consider, and the authors will finish with a short conclusion regarding overall transparency findings.

 

Gaps in the Current Regime

“Use of open registers by the shipping industry is increasingly dominating global trade; over the last 50 years, shipping by vessels from open registers has been growing at more than ten times the general world economic growth rate. In 1970 21.6% of vessels were registered in open registries. By 2015 this had grown to 71.3% of the global fleet.”[11] Lack of safe conditions on board due to low amounts of regulatory policies, poor pay scales for workers and improper work schedules for FOCs allow inexpensive crews to be drawn from a global labor pool. Average annual labor costs aboard German container ships, for example, were reduced by over 74% by flagging out to FOCs in 1997.[12] In the deregulated FOC labor system, the total number of seafarers around the world has fallen as ships have been allowed to become much larger. There has also been a radical change in ocean labor’s ethnic composition, as crew members have been increasingly drawn from countries with relatively low wages and living conditions—leading to massive unemployment among unionized, high-wage seafarers from traditional maritime nations.[13] “Jail with a salary” has become a common figure of speech for work at sea in the FOC system.[14]

Environmental concerns also play a massive role in the current acts of FOCs. For example, the Deepwater Horizon’s registration was under the Marshall Islands,[15] a notorious FOC, causing quite a stir in the United States’ Congress, yet we saw no further restrictions on FOCs from this tragic incident.[16] Furthermore, the illegal nature regarding the activities of Liberia’s warlord and former President, Charles Taylor, was well documented as he was brought before the ICJ for war crimes, using ships on the Liberian Registry to move illegal goods, such as blood diamonds and illegal arms.[17] Even if such a behavior is known, enforcement is nigh impossible. “As is the case with flags of convenience in the mainstream shipping industry, the process of ‘reflagging’ enables a continuous circle of non-compliant behavior, as vessels are able to re-flag to a new register when the conditions imposed by their current flag, or the consequences of non-compliant behavior under that flag, become too onerous or restrictive. Similarly, if a previously non-compliant flag State decides to mend its ways and clean up its register, or to de-register vessels in order to reduce overcapacity, de-registering a vessel can export the problem, as the vessel concerned can simply find a new, less responsible flag State.”[18]

 

Registering of the Stena Nordica[19]

The Stena Nordica was chosen as it is a ship in which Author Thomas Viguier used to work on as a Merchant Marine Officer in 2015 while it was under the French flag. The vessel currently resides under the Bahamian flag, and thus being flagged under an FOC, made an opportune choice for the authors to have conversations about re-flagging without raising any eyebrows. The authors also chose this vessel as the Author knew the exact details of the vessel, allowing more detailed conversations regarding gross tonnage and net tonnage, as well as other important dates regarding flagging history and construction. Furthermore, Mr. Viguier had the chance to assist to the process of re-flagging the vessel from British to French flag, going through procedures, audits and formalities required to issue all the necessary certificates in order to obtain the right to sail the French flag. Furthermore, such procedures are highlighted by the IMO in its website section “Legal Affairs” under the article “Registration of Ships and Fraudulent Registration Matters”.  However, given further considerations of the scope of this paper, the authors decided not to go too far down the path of full re-flagging for legal reasons. However, the countries selected represent an Arctic State, Norway, which is highly respected for its high standards in terms of flag state regulations, and two flags of convenience: Liberia and Honduras, with the second inextricably linked to Panama.

a. Norway

As all States, even if landlocked, have the right to enjoy the freedom of sailing the high seas and the right of innocent passage within territorial waters of foreign States according to UNCLOS,[20] the above considered States may constitute possible flags that may fly in Arctic waters. As will be shown infra, such FOCs are currently engaging in Arctic shipping in the Northern Sea Route (NSR). At the top of the safety rankings, the Norwegian Maritime Authority shows transparency and good governance, providing in their website all the regulations in force (both national and internationally) as well as all the legally required documents.[21] In addition, the following information may be found online: the organizational structure and employees’ contacts;[22] strict rules on the selection of Class Societies are applied, with Norway being the largest and most trusted one;[23]and fees are explicit and classified according to types of vessels, length and gross tonnage, which are fully related to the ship and are realistic according to the economic value of both the ship and the possible economic benefit.[24]Limitations are set clearly by law for trade areas, and the NIS has legal regulations and frameworks that will rule and explicitly designate the use of the registered vessel,[25]and all aspects of a ship’s life are covered, from construction[26] to scrapping[27] were also found online.

Norway’s Maritime Authority has a high level of transparency, given the easy access to all fees, documents, and requirements in a highly navigable website, even in English, therefore satisfying the ease of access and quality our information adopted definition of transparency. Using the definition of transparency as ease of accessing information, its quality, and the timeliness of disclosure,[28] the information was of high quality, immediately available, and available in Norwegian and English. Thus, Norway is one of the most transparent states in providing shipping registration data.

b. Panama and Honduras

Panama and Honduras are interwoven, as Honduras admitted that we would need to register the vessel with Panama Port State Control to have a Honduran flag. Despite this connection, the conversations’ outcomes were very different, and the information provided by both websites was not in accordance with the information provided on the phone.

For Panama, the names, contact information and pictures of the board members can be found, including their organizational structure. However, Panama shows a lack of transparency on the documents required to register a vessel. Point 4 on “Abanderamiento Regular” (Regular flag attribution) states the Dirección General de la Marina Mercante reserves its right to ask for further documents for the flag attribution.[29] On the very short phone call,[30] conducted in Spanish, Thomas Viguier spoke with two persons. The first was a female secretary who transferred our call to a man who spoke incomprehensibly and placed Mr. Viguier on hold. The hold was subsequently cut short. Therefore, we received no information for simply asking, “We would like to register a vessel under the international registry of Panama.” Again, using the authors’ accepted definition from Johnstone and Ágústsson, the authors classify Panama as non-transparent as the website was nearly inoperable, not all information was accessible in English, and even a native speaker could not gather more information on the phone. Furthermore, the authors could not confirm the information on the website provided was accurate, which was an issue for other countries.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of transparency, Honduras had an unwieldy website where very little information regarding the board could be found.[31] There was part labeled “lawyers” with no names in the organizational chart, yet Mr. Viguier learned on the phone call that these lawyers are on standby to sign off on any accepted registration for a low price equivalent to 300 USD.[32] Furthermore, there is a “transparency” box on the website that lead to another complex website where opposite information may be found (e.g., the name of the General Director on the Dirección General de la Marina Mercante is “Roberto E. Cardona”[33] and the name in the Transparency Website is “Juan Carlos Rivera Garcia.”[34] The website itself raised transparency concerns before the call was even commenced.

An additional red flag for transparency was information sharing. When the Authors attempted to share the website’s link on Facebook, they received a message saying the link was violating the Facebook Community Standards:

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 1

 

The three pillars of Facebook’s Community standards are authenticity, safety, and privacy.[35] Therefore, either the website itself was insecure, unauthentic, or was violating unique visitors’ data privacy. The authors’ thoughts are that the site was insecure as it was probably not willfully hiding authentic information or harvesting data but was a result of mere negligence in the website’s maintenance. Either way, that shows a lack of upkeep by the State and allows the system to be infiltrated. In this sense, the transparency was negligible. This negligible transparency has massive repercussions due to the its insecurity as it means that it is highly vulnerable to cyberattacks by individuals or groups, leading to stolen data, deliberate spreading of misinformation, or compromising the security of the ship database itself. All of these outcomes would not only affect the State’s ability to run an efficient shipping registry but could also lead to legal disputes due to lack of privacy concerns.

Thomas Viguier called the phone number provided on the website,[36] and he spoke in Spanish with a person[37] who, within 15 minutes, gave an incredibly cheap fee for a provisional registry of the Stena Nordica,[38] by merely taking the Gross tonnage as stated (usually the Net tonnage is used but requires specific documents to be found that are not publicly available), at around 20,000 GT, as the tonnage for calculations. The person gave us his private phone number to accelerate the process through WhatsApp, and his email. The fee was USD 8013.18 for 6 months. The only required conditions to get the provisional license were:  The owner’s official documents accredited by a lawyer from Honduras (photocopy allowed and lawyer provided) and the Certification from the Class Society.

The representative told Mr. Viguier that the only delay and denial he could get was from checking the arrest file regarding the ship. Furthermore, in the official documents posted online, there is a clause we, as owners, can benefit from in which the owners receive a discount if the vessel is not arrested of up to 40%.[39] The provisional fee is 8013.18 USD, which is half the price to the registration fee of 16,000 USD under the Norwegian International Register (NIS), and is 82.7% cheaper compared to the whole year fee of 46,310 USD under the NIS during year 1. Table 1 illustrates the calculation of both fees for a 20.000 NT vessel.

 

Table 1: Fee Comparisons Between Honduran and Norwegian Registration

 

The calculated fee from Honduras Maritime Authority and the one was given on the phone call aligned. The Net tonnage given on the phone was slightly smaller, justifying the difference. The person also told us that they cooperate with Panama for their international registry, being able to register a vessel in Honduras via Panama’s Maritime Authorities.

There were other concerns on the call since our representative pushed very hard for a deal to get done and did not ask a single question besides the information needed to get the price, such as whether the ship was in working order or it had been arrested. There were no questions about who the caller was, where the ship was currently located or who the owner was. The authors conclude that if they had had the money on hand, they could have registered the ship in a very non-transparent manner given the information requested. Given the above, Honduras had a shocking lack of transparency and may even encourage borderline illegal behavior. While access to information was easy for a Spanish speaker, an English speaker would have struggled, based on the other authors’ attempts.[40] These low prices, the little information provided, as well as inoperable websites and preferential treatment for Spanish-speakers (at least anecdotally) shows that there is little transparency in the process given the adopted definition of transparency by the authors.

c. Liberia

Given that Liberia’s official language is English and provided that author Jonathan Wood is a New York-barred attorney in good standing, he called the Liberian Registry office in New York City,[41] hoping to achieve better results. He announced himself as a researcher for the University of Akureyri, attempting to fight the stigma of the term “Flag of Convenience.” The answerer, Claire Williams, said everyone is busy and would not speak with him, and she referred to their YouTube channel. When further elaborating on the research, she grew slightly warmer and provided her email address to make a formal inquiry. The Author made such an inquiry via email and followed up, yet never received any response. The Author reviewed online material and YouTube videos (which were thinly-veiled propaganda[42] and testimonials), finding accessible information in English; however, the forms such as in the case of Honduras and Panama were lacking. While language was not a concern for transparency, the ease of access of information was difficult, given the many offices Liberia uses, which is 24, and the timelines of information (of which there was none). Therefore, Liberia’s Registry was non-transparent, according to the authors based on their adopted definition given no information was provided, and the website itself provided no valuable information as it was a Kafka-esque experience to find a number to call to even register a vessel.

 

FOCs in the Arctic:  A Growing Concern

The lack of transparency is spilling into the Arctic, as from over 23 commercial vessels that transited through the NSR in 2018, 6 were from flags of convenience (Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Bahamas, Liberia, Antigua and Barbuda), representing 26% of the transit.[43] While these numbers are small, scholars have predicted increased shipping via the NSR in the coming years, as Russia and China collaborate on infrastructure rebuilding.[44] See Table 2, which shows NSR shipping statistics for FOC flag states.

 

 

Table 2: Vessels that Sailed the NSR under a FOC

 

Four vessels are registered under the ice-class “Arc 4,” which is, according to the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, the lowest legal ice-class for Arctic ships.[45] Moreover, one ship is a tanker registered for ice-class “Ice 3,” which is, again, according to the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, for non-Arctic ships.[46] Such a ship, which sailed through the Northern Sea Route between October 23, 2018, and October 30, 2018, represented a significant oil-spill threat, given that it was below code and traversing the NSR at a time when sea ice begins to return. Finally, the last of the six ships are registered and approved for ice-class “Ice 1,” the lowest ice-class for non-Arctic ships, and sailed through the Northern Sea Route from October 22, 2018, and October 31, 2018, showing a significant deviation from Russian legal regulations on paper and a lack of enforcement. Such FOC shipping can present danger to the environment due to its fragility and human life, given the lack of search and rescue infrastructure. Given that there is no transparency from the FOC Flag states, how are other States, let alone NGOs and individuals, to monitor the increased shipping and risk in the near future? Overall, six of the seventeen ships were not registered and approved as Arctic ships[47].

Despite being classified as Ice-Class Arc4, vessels may follow navigation conditions depending on the service areas,[48] the conditions varying from Extreme to Easy. However, in the document “Rules for the Classification and Construction of Sea-Going Ships” of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping,[49] the conditions are not defined per se, showing a lack of good governance, as that leaves open loopholes and lets FOCs off the hook.

Flexibility has always been at the core of maritime regulation, which is reflected in the IMO’s conventions due to the changing nature of sea conditions. One example is Rule 2 of the COLREG 72 Convention,[50] but at what point are conditions to be considered easy for a well-defined ice-class hull and what type of class is meant to handle strictly defined maximum ice conditions? These questions must be resolved before a catastrophic incident in the NSR or elsewhere in the Arctic.

The previous analysis highlights the environmental risk the FOCs represent in the Arctic. Furthermore, following a study carried out by Arctic Council’s PAME Working Group, of over 207 vessels that sailed the NSR from 2011 to 2015, 94 were tankers,[51] representing 45% of the traffic and underlining the environmental risk in terms of oil spills in the Arctic. Based upon the above research, both online and via in-person phone calls, the authors conclude FOCs are not transparent and should be held more accountable.

 

Future Policy Proposals

There are several future policy proposals to improve transparency and accountability among the FOC States. The first future policy proposal is to require transnational corporations to begin doing country-by-country reports. This type of reporting requires companies that engage in international production to name each country the company is operating in as well as all the subsidiaries and affiliates within said country, the performance and tax charge of each subsidiary and affiliate, details of the cost and net book value, gross and net assets of its fixed assets in each country.[52] This type of report was implemented for mineral and energy companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2010 from the passing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and has been global in its reach, given the participant States in the Leading Group.[53] The reports detailed the payments remitted to countries of corporate origin (home) and countries of investment (host). This type of corporate, country-by-country reporting (CbC) creates a natural, albeit limited, sanction. Corporations eager to annul disclosure are forced to give up locations.

Similarly, the E.U. has already begun to receive CbC corporate records “to help investors to better assess the different national activities of multinational companies; and to enhance transparency about capital flows, for instance, to better enforce tax rules.”[54] This should be broadened to ensure that companies using FOCs to obfuscate dubious activity are brought to account. Implementing country-by-country reports for transnational corporations will create a transparency requirement for these companies, many of which operate shipping vessels engaged in IUU fishing. Often the FOC States do not have protections to ensure full disclosure by the owner of the ship.[55] The owner may be trying to hide this info for financial reasons, such as gaining anonymity using a tax haven. In contrast, others may be conducting illegal activities, such as illegal fishing, money laundering, and human trafficking,[56] and the owner wants not to be directly linked with those activities.

The second future policy proposal would call for upgraded Domestic Port State Controls. Port State Controls refers to “the inspection of foreign ships in national ports to verify that the condition of the ship and its equipment comply with the requirements of international regulations and that the ship is manned and operated in compliance with these rules.”[57] By upgrading those controls, ships can be held more accountable even if the flag of which it flies under is not holding it up to the same standards. One such way is to encourage the signing of the 2017 Paris Memorandum of Understanding, which creates a White, Grey, and Black List, with Ukraine joining the latter in 2019.[58] It has resulted in 3,781 detentions in 2016[59] and is slowing gaining more membership.

This can also be done in creative ways. In the United States on February 19, 1998, RCCL was indicted in Miami on a single count, not for dumping, but for “making” a false statement to the Coast Guard. The Nordic Empress discharged its waste in international waters, but the ship had presented the Coast Guard in Miami with an oil record book that omitted the discharge. While making a false statement to the Coast Guard is a crime in the United States, this was one of the first times the statute was used in this manner.[60] This is an example of upgraded Domestic Port State Controls that can help prevent illegal operations that FOC states otherwise go unchecked.

The final future policy proposal is to enhance regional/international agreements. In addition to cooperative efforts, existing conventions may be strengthened by supporting international agreements, such as MOUs. Fisheries management officials have proposed bilateral agreements between states with adjacent fishing zones or RFMOs that include mutual arrest powers. For example, Australia and France recently agreed to such a treaty, which would allow a French warship, for instance, to enter Australian waters and arrest a pirate FOC-IUU toothfish vessel and allow an Australian boat to do the same in French waters.[61] There are additional agreements regarding regulations on shipping. One such agreement is the Model Agreement on Exchange of Information put out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs.[62] Currently, 33 countries/jurisdictions have made these commitments.[63] This means those countries/jurisdictions will begin implementing the standards laid out in the agreement of transparency and exchange of information, which include measures to ensure transparency of ownership, by allowing agreements such as the Australian and French as well as the Model Agreement on Exchange to be implemented domestically and internationally increases the ability to regulate ships in other ports and policy regarding FOC vessels.

 

Conclusion

The FOCs of Panama, Honduras, and Liberia are uniformly and highly non-transparent based on their adopted definition of transparency, which stands in stark contrast to the transparency of Norway. This is based on the Authors’ personal experiences with live calls and comparing access to information in different jurisdictions, it is clear that FOCs are reticent to give any information over the phone and clam up if approached by any outsider, such as Jonathan Wood’s call with Liberia in English. Thomas Viguier’s call in Spanish to Honduras resulted in disorganized information, yet led to results that one could not call “good governance,” given the pushy attitude of the Honduran representative in trying to make a sale at any cost; however, Mr. Viguier experienced silence in Spanish as well in his Panamanian call. Overall, the authors noted inaccessibility and conflicting information on all of the websites explored, particularly Honduras. The best-run website was Liberia’s, yet it was a labyrinthine experience to find a phone number to call. Even the Spanish countries as their primary language did not provide accurate information, and the translations to English were severely lacking. As to timeliness, we did not receive any calls back or responses to email, yet the authors are confident that they could have registered the Stena Nordica via Honduras. While this contribution focused primarily on transparency, this impinged on multiple levels of good governance and gave the authors a tangible sense of agreement that FOC enforcement’s, or lack thereof, of the status quo and its transparency, as earlier defined, is severely lacking.

This lack of transparency is already having an impact. Given the fact that FOCs are already using the Northern Sea Route, including oil tankers, the risk of an emergency of an oil spill from an FOC-flagged vessel in the Arctic is imminently possible. Therefore, by bringing up the various proposals from Section V, supra, within the auspices of the Arctic Council, the ad hoc meetings of the Coastal Arctic Five, or the International Maritime Organization, there can be a much-needed dialogue on preventing the disasters that have occurred in the global South through lack of transparency and enforcement from happening in the very fragile environment in the Arctic. Given Norway’s membership in all of the above fora, and their transparency in ship registration, perhaps they may play a leadership role for stewardship of Arctic shipping transparency.

 

Endnotes

[1] Jamie Christy, “The Almost Always Forgotten, Yet Essential Part of Our World: An Examination of the Seafarer’s Lack of Legal and Economic Protections on Flag of Convenience Ships,” 32 U.S.F. Mar. L.J. 49, 50–51 (2020).

[2] Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, “Arctic Marine Strategic Plan 2015-2025,” PAME, available at https://www.pame.is/images/03_Projects/AMSP/AMSP_2015-2025.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[3] United Nations Treaty System, “United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea,” United Nations (1982), at Art. 24, para. 1(b), available at https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[4] Lloyd’s List, “Top 10 Flag States 2018,” Lloyd’s List Maritime Intelligence, (December 10, 2018), available at https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL1125024/Top-10-flag-states-2018 (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[5] See Christy, supra note 1, at pp. 49-51.

[6] See Goodman, Camille Jean, “The Regime for Flag State Responsibility in International Fisheries Law – Effective Fact, Creative Fiction, or Further Work Required?” Australia & New Zealand Mar. L.J., Vol. 23, pg. 157 (2009), available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266440227_The_Regime_for_Flag_State_Responsibility_in_International_Fisheries_Law_-_Effective_Fact_Creative_Fiction_or_Further_Work_Required (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[7] Hamad, Bakar, “Flag of Convenience Practice: A Threat to Maritime Safety and Security,” IJRDO-Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 1:8 at pg. 218(August 2016), available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308308749_Flag_of_Convenience_Practice_A_Threat_to_Maritime_Safety_and_Security.

[8] Tiili, Kristin & Ramakers, Annelien, “Rule of Law and Transparency in Modern Norwegian Whaling (2006-2015),” Nordicum-Meditteraneum 12:1 (2017) available at https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/volume-12-no-1-2017/double-blind-peer-reviewed-article/rule-law-transparency-modern-norwegian-whaling-2006-2015. (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[9] Johnstone, Rachael Lorna & Ágústsson, Hjálti Ómar, “Practicing What They Preach: Did the IMF and Iceland Exercise Good Governance in Their Relations 2008-2011?” Nordicum-Meditteraneum 8:1 (2013) available at https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/08-1/c48-article/practicing-what-they-preach-did-the-imf-and-iceland-exercise-good-governance-in-their-relations-2008-2011/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020) (emphasis in original).

[10] Friedl Weiss & Assisted by Silke Steiner, “Transparency As an Element of Good Governance in the Practice of the EU and the WTO: Overview and Comparison,” 30 Fordham Int’l L.J. 1545, 1549 (2007).

[11] Ford, Jessica & Chris Wilcox, “Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Maritime Trade—A New Approach for Identifying Countries as Flags of Convenience,” Marine Policy, pg. 298, (January 2019).

[12] See Morris, R., & T. Kilkauer, “Crews of Convenience from the Southwest Pacific,” New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, 26(2), (2001) at pg. 188.

[13] See Broeze F., The Globalisation of the Ocean: Containerisation from the 1950s to the Present, (St. John’s Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic Historic Association) (2002).

[14] Urbina, Ian, “Stowaways and Crimes Aboard a Scofflaw Ship,” N.Y. Times (July 19, 2015), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-ship.html (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[15] Kshetri, Nir, “Marshall Islands,” The Statesman’s Yearbook (Jan. 4. 2020) at pp. 813-815.

[16] See Clark, Andrew, “BP Oil Rig Registration Raised in Congress Over Safety Concerns,” The Guardian, (May 30, 2010), available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/30/oil-spill-deepwater-horizon-marshall-islands (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[17] See Sharife, Khadija, “Flying a Questionable Flag:  Liberia’s Lucrative Shipping Industry,” Reportage World Policy Journal, (Winter 2010/2011) at pg. 113, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40963779.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af0254f5d81676f199b2878706f9454f9 (last accessed August 25, 2020).

[18] Goodman, note 9 supra, at pg. 164.

[19] The authors may be contacted to provide any more details on the ship, as necessary, to prove their knowledge of this vessel.

[20] See UNCLOS, note 3 supra at Arts. 26, 53.

[21] Norwegian Maritime Authority Website, “Registration of Ship in the NIS,” Sjøfartsdirektoratet, available at https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/registration-of-commercial-vessels-in-nisnor/new-registration-nis/documentation-requirements-nis/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[22] Norwegian Maritime Authority Website, “Organizational Structure and Employees,”  Sjøfartsdirektoratet, available at https://www.sdir.no/en/organization/organizational-structure-and-employees/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[23] See Norwegian Maritime Authority Website at “Recognized Organizations,” supra note 17, available at https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/vessels/vessel-surveys/approved-classification-societies/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020.)

[24] See id. at “21-December-2009-No.-1738-Tariff-of-Fees,” supra note 17,  available at https://www.sdir.no/contentassets/e7ee839cecce49cb8286b5fba381c841/21-december-2009-no.-1738-tariff-of-fees.pdf?t=1582119505790. (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[25] See id. at “Trade Areas NIS Ships,” supra note 18, available at https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/registration-of-commercial-vessels-in-nisnor/new-registration-nis/trade-areas-nis-ships/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[26] See id. at “New Registration in the Shipbuilding Register,” supra note 17, available at https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/registration-of-commercial-vessels-in-nisnor/new-registration-the-shipbuilding-register/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[27] See id. at “New Registration in the Shipbuilding Register,” supra note 17 available at https://www.sdir.no/en/shipping/registration-of-commercial-vessels-in-nisnor/new-registration-the-shipbuilding-register/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[28] See Johnstone & Ágústsson, supra, note 11.

[29] Autoridad Maritima de Panama, “Servicio Exterior,” Republica de Panama, available at https://amp.gob.pa/servicios/marina-mercante/abanderamiento-de-naves/servicio-exterior/ (Last  accessed August 25, 2020).

[30] All phone call logs were conducted using Jonathan Wood’s phone and logs are available to review upon request.

[31] Dirección General de la Marina Mercante Honduras Website, “Directorio de Contactos,” Dirección General de la Marina Mercante Honduras, available at https://marinamercante.gob.hn/?page_id=2336 (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[32] Author Jonathan Wood, currently working as an attorney in private practice, can provide insight into the legal market and provide more details, if necessary, as to how out of line that price is with the market.

[33] See note 27 supra.

[34] See id. at “IAIP,” supra note 27, available at https://portalunico.iaip.gob.hn/portal/index.php?portal=343&Itemid=59 (Last accessed April 18, 2020).

[35] See Facebook, “Community Standards,” Facebook, available at https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/ (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[36] See  “Registro de Buques,” supra note 24, available at http://marinamercante.gob.hn/?page_id=2342 (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[37] Information on this individual can be provided privately as the authors found him on LinkedIn but for purposes of this paper, we choose to preserve his anonymity.

[38] Marine Traffic Website, “STENA NORDICA (Ro-Ro/Passenger Ship) Registered in Bahamas,” MarineTraffic, which includes Vessel Details, Current Position and Voyage Information (IMO 9215505, MMSI 311000843, Call Sign C6EB2), available at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:194642/mmsi:311000843/imo:9215505/vessel:STENA NORDICA (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[39] See Dirección General de la Marina Mercante Honduras, “Ver Documento 7,” La Gaceta, (May 24, 2018), available at   https://portalunico.iaip.gob.hn/portal/ver_documento.php?uid=MzkyMjU4ODkzNDc2MzQ4NzEyNDYxOTg3MjM0Mg== (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[40] Furthermore, seeking more information was difficult as the office itself did not know where all of the information was located as while Mr. Viguier was on hold, the initial person on the phone did not place him on hold. He heard shouting from the individual who picked up the phone, asking where certain offices were physically located and who was supposed to handle the topic of international ship registration. An entire discussion, held in Spanish, over the phone about whom to transfer him to before the individual realized his mistake and placed Mr. Viguier on hold. Therefore, Honduran transparency was shockingly low.

[41] See Liberian Registry, “Contacts,” Liberian Registry, available at https://www.liscr.com/liberian-registry#new-york (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[42] See Liberian Registry, “All Flags Are Not Alike,” YouTube (June 28, 2018), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKY3pp6wtUA (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[43] Arctic-LIO, “Transits 2018,” Northern Sea Route Information, available at https://arctic-lio.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Transits_2018.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[44] See generally Tom Røseth, “Russia’s China Policy in the Arctic, Strategic Analysis,” Taylor & Francis, 38:6, pp. 841-859, available at DOI: 10.1080/09700161.2014.952942 (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[45] See Russian Maritime Register of Ships, “Rules for the Classification and Construction of Sea-Going Ships,” Government of the Russian Federation, at pp. 12–13, (September 9, 2016), available at https://rs-class.org/upload/iblock/ee4/ee42f902bc2f1b2eb2bbeff75efffcee.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[46] See id. at pg. 12.

[47] Approved ships included an icebreaker, a harbor tug, a fishing vessel, a bunkering vessel engaged in harbor activity and 2 cargo vessels engaged in short-term cabotage.

[48] See id. at pg. 13.

[49] See id.

[50] United Nations Treaty Series, “Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea,” United Nations (1972), available at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201050/volume-1050-I-15824-English.pdf> (Last accessed August 25 2020).

[51] Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, “Types of Ships 2011-2015,” PAME (no date given), available at  https://www.pame.is/images/03_Projects/AMSA/NSR/types-of-ships_2011-2015.jpg (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[52] See Richard Murphy, “Country-by-Country Reporting: Holding Multinational Corporations to Account Wherever They Are,” Task Force for Financial Integrity & Economic Development, (June 2009), available at http://www.financialtransparency.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Final_CbyC_Report_Published.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[53] See id. at pg. 2.

[54] European Commission “Commission Staff Working Document Impact Assessment assessing the potential for further transparency on income tax information Accompanying the document Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2013/34/EU as regards disclosure of income tax information by certain undertakings and branches,” European Commission, SWD/2016/0117 final – 2016/0107 (COD), (April 12, 2016), available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52016SC0117

(Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[55] See Hamad, Bakar, “Flag of Convenience Practice: A Threat to Maritime Safety and Security,” IJRDO-Jounral of Social Science and Humanities Research, 1:8 at Abstract, (August 2016), available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308308749_Flag_of_Convenience_Practice_A_Threat_to_Maritime_Safety_and_Security (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[56] See Sharife, Khadija, “Flying a Questionable Flag:  Liberia’s Lucrative Shipping Industry,” Reportage World Policy Journal, (Winter 2010/2011) at pg. 115, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40963779.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af0254f5d81676f199b2878706f9454f9 (last accessed August 25, 2020).

[57] Anonymous, “Port State Control,” International Maritme Organization, available at http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/MSAS/Pages/PortStateControl.aspx (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[58] See Press Release, “Safeguarding Responsible and Sustainable Shipping,” Paris Memorandum of Understanding, at Executive Summary (2017), available at https://www.parismou.org/2017-paris-mou-annual-report-%E2%80%9Csafeguarding-responsible-and-sustainable-shipping%E2%80%9D (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[59] See id.

[60] See United States v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 11 F. Supp. 2d 1358, 1365 (S.D. Fla. 1998) (holding “Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), as an allegedly more specific ‘false statements’ law regulating cruise ship’s conduct in failing to properly report alleged discharge of oil, did not preclude prosecution under the False Statements Act for false statements allegedly made to Coast Guard upon ship’s arrival in United States port.”)

[61] Australia Country Fact Sheet, “Treaty Between the Government of Australia and the Government of the French Republic on Cooperation in the Maritime Areas Adjacent to the French Southern and Antarctic Territories (TAAF), Heard Islands and the McDonald Islands,” Government of Australia, (Canberra, 24 November 2003), available at www.aphref.aph.gov.au_house_committee_jsct_12may2004_treaties_frnia.pdf (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[62] See Maritime Transport Committee, “Maritime Security—Ownership and Control of Ships: Options to Improve Transparency,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, (December 17, 2003), available at http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=DSTI/DOT/MTC(2003)61/REV1&docLanguage=En (Last accessed August 25, 2020).

[63] See id. at pg. 22.

Francesco Sangriso, Snorri Sturlson Heimskringla: Le saghe dei re di Norvegia V (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2019)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

This hefty 862-page volume is the fifth instalment of the new Italian edition of Snorri Sturlson’s Heimskringla, the best-known among the old Norse kings’ sagas and a true testament to Sangriso’s dedication and scholarship.

This scientifically flawless volume contains the edition of the Óláfs saga Helga, a pivotal element in the structure of the Heimskringla and its longest section, focused on the life and deeds of Óláfr Haraldsson, later known as Saint Óláf and Rex Perpetuus Norwegie. Far from being a simple biography of an outstanding king, this saga also provides a deep insight into Nordic society, as well as captivating glimpse of its everyday life. Institutions, warfare, medicine, religious beliefs: several facets of Nordic life have been portrayed in Snorri’s lines, in a fascinating pageant of lively details.

The importance of this section of the Heimskringla, however, goes well beyond its nature as mere “historical source”, since the text includes a remarkable collection of 168 inserts of skaldic poetry. Many of these are primary sources vis-à-vis original authors such as Sigvatr ꝥórðarson and Ottar svarti, whose poetic production had been largely preserved in the text of the medieval saga.

As done in Sangriso’s previous instalments of the Haralds saga gráfeldar, this volume too spans over three chapters, the first being basically a long foreword to the translation, in this fifth volume once more based on Bjarni Aðalbjanarson’s 2002 edition. In the foreword Sangriso explores the roots of Olaf’s sanctity and the development of his cult, fostered by the Church, which exploited the older mystique of the “holy king” as a way to strengthen its presence in a formerly pagan environment.

Nevertheless, Snorri’s narration doesn’t seem excessively biased and his take on the figure of the king is complex and multifaceted. What the reader is getting here lies far from a bombastic hagiography of “saint”. It’s rather the life of a man whose violent behaviour is not rhetorically concealed, though his bravery and devotion are frequently praised. In this larger scheme, therefore, Olaf’s Christianity is just one step in his quest for royal power, rather than the outcome of some divine inspiration.

The second chapter is the pivotal element of the whole book, as occurred already in the Haralds saga gráfeldar, although the Óláfs saga Helga is way longer. A rich critical apparatus of footnotes is again a testament to the curator’s philological struggle and provides some very useful and welcome clues about the historical background of the saga. Once again, the fluency of the translation is praiseworthy, which makes this reading extremely pleasant, rewarding, and almost as intriguing as a well-written novel.

The third chapter is about poetry in the Óláfs saga Helga. Here the 168 poetic inserts are extracted from the text, dissected word by word, and sometimes preceded by a short foreword about their authors and their biographies. Lastly, this section is followed by an index of places; it is an extremely valuable asset for the full comprehension and appreciation of the saga itself. Unfortunately, the volume lacks the guidance of one or more maps for a visual location of the same places, and this is perhaps the weakest point of the whole edition. A few geographical plates, indeed, would have pleased all those readers who might feel a bit lost in Olaf’s peregrinations.

Once more, in this book, Sangriso proves his high-level scholarship and when the reader gets into his long (and at times intimidating) footnotes, s/he feels confident that his hand has been guided by a vast and reliable knowledge of the subject. Unlike the third volume of the Heimskringla, which I previously reviewed for Nordicum-Mediterraneum, Snorri’s text spans here over a large portion of the book, thus creating a good balance between eminently scholarly sections and pages that might appeal, instead, to any casual reader.

However, in this volume too, the analysis of the poetical inserts is clearly addressed to a small élite of specialists, who must be well-versed in Germanic philology. Other, more general readers, yet, can be equally pleased by the fluency of the translation and the captivating flavour of Old-Norse epic that, sometimes, gleams powerfully through Snorri’s words. This Olaf’s saga is actually highly recommended to any Medieval historian, insofar as it is a valuable primary source with regard to several aspects of 11th-century everyday life and a cherry-picking of marvels from that time and age.

Kamrul Hossain, José Miguel Roncero Martín and Anna Petrétei (eds.), Human and Societal Security in the Circumpolar Arctic (Leiden and Boston: Brill Nijhoff, 2018)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , ,

This well-conceived edited volume offers new research and analysis on human security in the Scandinavian and Russian Arctic. The editors sought to inform national and local policy as decision-makers and citizens plan for the future. The book uses many disciplines and methods to get at the dimensions of human security. In so doing, the volume illustrates how those who live in the Arctic—indigenous or not—respond to the opportunities and threats to human security in the region.

The book is divided into 5 parts: an extended essay on the central theme, as well as a conclusion. Parts 2, 3, 4 cut at the issues by putting the “local” into different contexts. Part 2 concerns local actors and governance frameworks. Part 3 switches scale and considers local implications of global developments. Part 4 then considers identity and values. Taken together the volume achieves its goal of being useful to those interested in refashioning Arctic policy and law to better facilitate human security.

The editors use the definition of societal security used by the Copenhagen School in security studies: “’sustainability, within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture, and religious and national identity and custom’ of a society. “Evolution” means the local society makes meaningful choices that work in their place rather than adapting to decisions made far away and with little input from the community. Security for communities produces deep security. The crucial claim in the book is that if communities can make their own security in important ways, then national security is largely sustained.

The policy side Arctic states each have policies for the Arctic. The thorough and thoughtful discussion by Martín in Chapter 2 of the policies, however, highlights the mismatch between what is good for the territorial state and what might be good for human security. The central problem is that national policies rarely multiply cultural and institutional options. Indeed they may weaken communities by undermining (sometimes literally) the economic security of a city or a herding community.

Alexander Sergunin continues that point by showing how Russian Arctic policy supports or hinders human security and sustainable development. In official policy both are to be enhanced. But, the federal bureaucracy usually resists or hinders local initiative rather than “using the resources of these actors in a creative way” (63). He pursues the gap between municipalities and the national level through a discussion of major city plans for human security and sustainable development. Even cities, however, mostly emphasize economic and environmental issues rather than the security of individuals.

Colonialism remains a governance reality. Sara Nyhlén, Katarina Nygren, Anna Olofsson and Johanna Bergström use a technique from feminist theory, intersectionalism, as a method to look at Swedish Arctic policy discourse. The discourses favor the state through claims, metaphors, and assumptions:

  • Claims of discovery over indigenous presence.
  • Mobilizing metaphors that shape problem representation, for example that sustainable development reduces risk and promotes economic development (in which central experts matter more than local ones).
  • Colonial assumptions that states are the only legitimate form of organization and that states cooperate.

Once unpacked, the discourses can be connected to power to act or not. Change the discourse and new human security-centered policy might be possible.

Wilfred Greaves continues the theme of colonization of Sapmi (the region where the Sami live in Scandinavia and Russia) by looking at policy over a long-time frame. Control over Sapmi and the Sami was part of Norway’s effort to establish itself as a sovereign state rather than a part of Sweden or Denmark. It was a matter of national security to put the Sámi under Norwegian control lest they ally themselves with other emerging states or abandon the borderlands. The Sami almost never resisted the efforts from further south and the policy of Norwegianization. By the 1970s, however, growing support for indigenous culture led Samí to claim they were rights holders who had a right to their own culture. Samí in Norway do not seek autonomy, so the colonial project is still at work, but they do negotiate frequently over government plans for their lands. They have also shown that “going green” is often a threat to human security of the Sami.

Michael Sheehan focuses on how different conceptions of territoriality produced conflict between Sami and Sweden’s construction of the ESRANGE launch site to put rockets into outer space. The Swedish government thought it wilderness. For the Sami, it represented numerous spaces for reindeer herding and other cultural activities. The author explains why Sweden chose space exploration and how the launch site connected to broader European space institutions, but were blind to Sami institutions. For example, rather than understanding Sami herding practices, Sweden responded to Sami concerns by imagining the communities were worried about personal security and offering blast protection sites to use.

The six chapters in part 3 are devoted to resource extraction. It begins with a critique of how states ‘cost’ things by Corinna Casi. Most states use economic cost/benefit analysis. They assign a price to clean air or freedom of movement and then decide on the most beneficial use. Casi argues the approach is misguided and not suitable for creating, preserving, or sustaining human security. Some environmental and human values can’t be priced effectively. Moreover, humans are more than consumers who buy and sell. Listening and finding solutions through discussion are better than seeing markets everywhere.

That critique is followed by how Arctic communities might get better discussion. Satu Rantu-Tyrkkö argues that social work could reduce risks of metal mining in Finland, if it would be more futures oriented by including intergenerational justice and responsibilities. Julia Loginova follows with her study local perceptions of security in Pripechor’e, Russia, a Komi-Izhuma community seeing considerable oil and gas development. The Komi-Izhuma have complex notions of security. When they sought to include this complexity in policy and plans, the government was deaf to them. As a consequence, they changed strategies and have demanded land and other rights from an oil firm rather than the national government.

Gerald Zojer argues that the discourse of sustainable development is too tied to the market to provide much human security. His evidence is based on discourse analysis of Arctic Council ministerial meetings. That discourse shifted from environmental concerns to market ones that emphasize the use of the region’s natural resources. In the shift the governments talked of human development through economic development. While it is possible that hydrocarbon development will help Arctic communities, it is not especially likely because formal markets do not recognize the benefits of the informal economies that are being displaced.

Hossain and Petrétei develop the evolutionary theme. They conceive Arctic society as a transnational one, but where all the communities are experience similar environmental and economic pressures. For resource extraction to promote human and societal security, policy would have to bring in environmental and sociopolitical responsibility.

The chapter by Stefan Kirchner argues law might help others find their responsibility to the Sami responsibility. He argues that the Sami of Finland have avenues to resist or shape government policy. While few Sami hold their areas as property, they do have procedural access to changing policy in areas of concern to them. For example, reindeer will not feed near power-generating windmills, but by using their procedural rights to participate, better policy might be possible in that new area as well as in subsoil mining.

Part 4 has four articles using a variety of cultural approaches to understanding human security. Helene Peterbauer and José Martín apply literary analysis to works about Svalbard. The chapter could be usefully read along with those in Section 1, notably Greaves. Some literature makes appeals to restore Sami culture, another type takes up a minority within the Sami as the theme. Traditional security themes from the Cold War, e.g. Soviet miners were really Soviet soldiers, told a different story about threats to Norway.

 

Tahnee Prior argues that a bottom up approach to understanding human (in)security would be useful and points to efforts to tell individual stories through blogs and other digital means. Digital storytelling can reveal relationships between gender and security.

Elena Busyreva interviewed descendants of Finns who migrated to the Kola peninsula in Russia to understand what was left of their culture. Most lost the Finnish language in a number of ways (policy, marriage…). The religious elements, while weakened by the closure of all Lutheran churches, survived in family traditions. Material culture carried over in housing design and the all-important sauna.

The last chapter in this part presents a research project by Tatiana Zhigaltsova where children drew maps and pictures of where they went during the day and also their most and least favorite places. Most of the Russian young intend to leave as soon as they are old enough…a problem for many Arctic communities. The results could improve planning on how to encourage the young to stay.

In sum, the book will speak to many researchers and policy makers. The sheer diversity empirical approaches and examples enhances Arctic scholarship. The solid use of shifting levels of analysis advances theory.

Elana Wilson Rowe, Arctic Governance: Power in cross-border cooperation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

Either described as a peaceful and stable region where a special type of governance has been instrumental in building trust among States or as a region prone to potential future conflicts over territory and resources, the Arctic is now at the centre of many studies and research in policy-making, governance and international relations about the changing post-Cold War  geopolitical world. In Arctic Governance: Power in cross-border cooperation, NUPI Research Professor and Adjunct Professor at Nord University in Norway, Elana Wilson Rowe, explores the contested but largely cooperative nature of Arctic governance in the post-Cold War period, and the ways in which power has shaped both cross-border cooperation and performance of diplomacy in the region. An important premise of the book is that, in global governance, power should not be viewed a zero-sum game but rather as a fluid performance between different actors. Rather than focusing on describing power as it is, the book uses different analytical frameworks from international relations to geography to understand how this performance of power plays out in practice.

Building on this idea of power, Wilson Rowe focuses on how Arctic cross-border cooperation is marked by power relations that are under constant re-enactment and renegotiation. She takes Russia’s role at the Arctic Council as an example to examine to what extent Arctic governance can be understood as a competition for the exercise of authority over certain places and certain audiences. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to governance, security and diplomacy in the Arctic, it calls for establishing more inclusive and situated ways of looking at the interplay all Arctic. Throughout the book, Wilson Rowe develops four key propositions to demonstrate how Arctic cross-border cooperation has been marked by these relations of power.

After an introduction and a first chapter where the book sets the contextual underpinnings and describes the five groups of actors at the centre of Arctic governance (i.e. Indigenous peoples, States, commercial actors, NGOs, and Scientists), Chapter 2 focuses on how power relations are manifested in and shaped by the definitions and representations of Arctic policy objects and the region more broadly. The Arctic as physical space is framed and understood through specific dichotomic narratives (e.g. the Arctic as region of peace or conflict; conservation and environment against sustainable development) and visual vocabularies. However, the complexities of Arctic governance cannot be analysed through simple binary frames. This chapter illustrates that such framing is not fixed and is often contested or used by actors to promote one narrative over another when performing Arctic diplomacy. She further argues that while framings are often regarded as an academic analytical tool, they are also actively used by the actors themselves to realise their preferred outcomes. Wilson Rowe narrows her analyses down to three discursive framings: 1) “the Arctic as a zone of peace”  and the challenges following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, 2) “the global Arctic versus the regional Arctic” the involvement of new Arctic Council Observer States, and 3) “business as a tool of pan-Arctic” and the establishment of the Arctic Economic Council in 2015. Experienced players in Arctic governance seem highly aware of these framings and the importance of what Wilson Rowe calls “geo-power”. Contestation and debate only arise when these narratives and framings are placed under pressure by changing circumstances or new considerations.

In Chapter 3, Wilson Rowe studies the proposition that as policy fields come together and endure, it is important to study how structured power relations work. Having a hierarchical outlook is a useful analytical tool in an Arctic context. Apart from the more obvious “Arctic States” (A8) and “Arctic Coastal States” (A5) clubs, Wilson Rowe illustrates this proposition with the examples of Russia and the United States. According to her, both countries are best understood as resting power in Arctic relations. In day-to-day Arctic diplomacy and interactions, the two countries act like any other A8 or A5 country, however, at critical, agenda-setting junctures, their participation is seen by other states as essential and their actions have long-lasting significance for the development of Arctic multilateralism. Norway is another good example of a State that was able to navigate predetermined hierarchical norms and position itself as a ‘knowledge power’ at the leading end of Arctic governance and politics, especially as a central actor in Russia-Western cooperation.

In Chapter 4, Wilson Rowe examines the role of informal norms and key social constraints characterizing Arctic cross-border cooperation. She uses Russia’s role at the Arctic Council between 1997 and 201 as an example to argue that countries are shaped by policy field norm constraints and seek to transform them. She concludes that between 1997 and 2007, Russia showed low levels of participation and had some successful “low-political” cooperation as the projects proposals only focused on the Russian Arctic without additional cooperation. As argued in the chapter, this challenges the expectation that all Arctic countries will participate in circumpolar governance. However, the second decade (2007-2017) saw Russia significantly invest in creating binding agreements and be a norm-making leader in the region.

Chapter 5 explores how different actors constantly work to refine or redefine power relations. Arctic governance is understood as a form of competition over who has authority and who can exercise this authority. Using negotiations at the ‘science–policy’ and ‘peoples–states’ interfaces at high-level Arctic Council meetings, Wilson Rowe uses the framework of “civic epistemology” to understand how authority is articulated or challenged. Her work examines the interplay between politics and authority in the performance of power.

Absorbing and well-written, the book conveys complex ideas and approaches in a simple way that allows readers to engage and connect with the text. Far from the conflict-driven narratives of more realist approaches to international relations, Wilson Rowe’s in-depth analysis of how power performances between multiple actors shaped relations in the Arctic provides a most-interesting perspective on the need to prioritise and expand pan-Arctic cooperation. Overall, Wilson Rowe’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in international relations and the Arctic. Published by Manchester University Press and available for open-access download, Arctic Governance: Power in Cross-Border Cooperation offers one of the most timely and refreshing takes on Arctic governance.

Hilmar Þór Hilmarsson, The Economic Crisis and its Aftermath in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Do As We Say and Not As We Do (London: Routledge, 2019)

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This is a timely book written by a macroeconomic expert with a broad theoretical and institutional knowledge of the region under consideration. The pivot question to be answered in this book concerns how small northern European countries came through the economic crisis, and what prospects they may experience should a new crisis hit them. From the very beginning, it becomes clear that a ‘small economy’ is not necessarily a well-defined analytical concept. In economic terms the so-called Continental Nordic countries are large compared to the three Baltic States and Iceland, approximately in the proportion 10:1, although in size of population the disproportion (except for Iceland) is somewhat smaller.

The author quite quickly reduces his analysis to focus on how the ‘small’ small economies managed the crisis. He is undertaking a rather broad-ranging scrutiny of the economic development of the Baltic States compared to Iceland and, to a much lesser extent, the bigger Nordic economies as well as transitory economies in central Europe (Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic). He wants to figure out why the Baltic States had the worst macroeconomic record of all these countries with regard to getting through the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008/09. These three countries had the steepest fall in GDP, the highest rise in unemployment, the highest rate of inequality and, without any comparison, experienced a large emigration rate (close to 10 percent of population) of mainly young people.

Chapter by chapter the author goes through the likely economic explanations of this poor performance. One overall conclusion is the lack of economic and political autonomy and the very Anglo-Saxon inspired welfare regimes of all three Baltic states, which is a striking difference when comparison to the economic development in Iceland is analyzed.

The relatively weak automatic budget-stabilizers made GDP and employment plunge dramatically, causing a kind of exodus of mainly young (educated) people to leave these countries. Furthermore, the political elite felt themselves very committed to make the countries become a full member of the euro-zone as soon as possible. This political ambition made a fixed exchange rate policy an indisputable request from the EU. Hereby, a re-start of an economic up-swing by a strategic devaluation of the currency was blocked, even though the IMF recommended, at least in the Latvian case, such a policy.

The author is also pointing at the dominant position of foreign, especially Swedish, banks. In practice, the Baltics had no financial autonomy. The private sector had to borrow at subsidiaries of foreign banks. Credit policy was decided in Stockholm rather than in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. All three countries ran heavy balance-of-payments deficits in the boom leading up to 2008 – foreign loans were seemingly without limit. When the credit turn-around suddenly came, governments had to ‘do as we say’ (part of the book’s subtitle), meaning that the foreign banks had a large word to say in economic policy (i.e. fixed exchange rate and austerity) and requested a (partial) bail-out of some insolvent banks – causing public debt to rise. The parallel to Southern Europe (see Jespersen 2016) is striking, whilst the contrast to Iceland is revealing: dramatic devaluation, limited and socially balanced austerity, and no bailing out of private banks.

The content of this thought-provoking book, I think, can be summarized by a quote (found in the book, p. 14) by Joseph Stiglitz: “This book is about economics and economic ideologies and their interactions with politics: it is a case study of how, even the best intentions, when new institutions and policies are created on the basis of oversimplified views of how economies function, the results can be not only disappointing, but even disastrous” (Stiglitz, 2016, p.7, emphasis added).

The over-arching hypothesis is vindicated: that the Baltic States came through the economic crisis more poorly than neighboring states due to an inadequate economic policy dictated by their political elite and foreign stakeholders (i.e. the EU and the Swedish banks). But, and this is an important “but” which the author stresses several times, their specific history and the present somewhat tense security situation along the Russian border (in relation to a significant Russian-speaking minority in Estonia and Latvia) called for a tight political integration to Western Europe (economics) and the US (defense).

Having emphasized this extraordinary political challenge and the limited sovereignty of the governments, the author is still rather critical when it comes to social policy. It is, according to him, mainly a national prerogative to decide on how the burden of public expenditures and the economic crisis is shared among people. The Baltics are the most unequal societies in the Northern region, and here the governments could take lessons from the more mature Nordic welfare states, where the burden is much more equally shared. The Anglo-Saxon welfare model only works (if at all) in countries with a high degree of fiscal and monetary autonomy, like the US (and perhaps also the UK). It is in this light that the somewhat subtle subtitle of the book, “Do as we say and not as we do”, can be understood. The author is hereby making an accusation against the external advisers (especially representatives from Sweden and Finland) that they recommended/required a fixed exchange rate and austerity policies of the Baltic governments; but when they were in a similar situation, in the early 1990s, these two countries devaluated the currency strongly and kept their welfare system intact. The word of ‘hypocrisy’ is written between the lines, whereas Iceland stands out as a strong counter-example.

The book is to be recommended to anyone who takes a serious interest into the economics of the Baltic States and wants to go beyond prejudice and conventional wisdom.

 

References

Jespersen, J. (2016). The Euro – Why it failed, London: Pivot-Book, Palgrave/Macmillan.

Stiglitz, J.E. (2016). The Euro – How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe, New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Geir Hønneland, Russia and the Arctic: Environment, Identity and Foreign Policy & Leif Christian Jensen, International Relations in the Arctic: Norway and the Struggle for Power in the New North (London/New York: IB Tauris, 2016)

Book review, , ,

Geir Hønneland and Leif Christian Jensen, both friends and colleagues at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, wrote one book each that were published in the early part of 2016 by indie publisher, I.B. Tauris. Although each book discusses a subject of its own, for many reasons, the two books seem to nicely complement each other especially for scholars seeking a more holistic approach to Norwegian-Russian Arctic relations. As the present author started reading Hønneland’s book first and then went on to read Jensen’s, this review unfolds in exactly the same manner.

In “Russia and the Arctic: Environment, Identity and Foreign Policy,” Geir Hønneland goes back to one of his most prolific research subjects, namely Russia, and more specifically how Russia defines its own Arctic identity. Indeed, the aim of Hønneland’s book is to shift the discourse from the more media-friendly notions of the “Arctic buzz” and the “Scramble for the Arctic” to discuss what Russia actually wants in the Arctic, and how Russia actually defines itself, through its own Arctic and political discourses, as an Arctic nation. At the heart of the book lies an essential conceptualization of narrative and identity theory in which narratives are not construed as being a mere reflection of the world, but rather constitutive of the self, and as Hønneland puts it, narratives are rarely of one’s own making. In having Russia as the main protagonist of his book, Hønneland is able to further explore the role of the Arctic in shaping Russia’s projection of its own identity at the national level as well as onto both the international and the inter-regional (i.e. Arctic) stages. To do so, Hønneland divided his book into six chapters of relatively equal size touching upon subjects such as the so-called “Rush for the Arctic”, the delimitation of the Barents Sea, management of marine resources, continental shelf issues and Region building processes through identity formation. As a Norwegian researcher, Hønneland also strongly focuses on the relation between Norway and Russia, especially at the Barents-region level but also onto the broader stage.

Ambivalent relations could be said to be one of the major premises on which this book is built. Internally, Russia is perceived as the epitome of the epic absurdist genre, the “anti-Disneyland” where everything that could go wrong actually goes wrong, but Russia also likes to be seen as “the territory without limits”, the boundless, borderless land with no edges. And, to this respect, Hønneland shows the readers that the characteristics, which are generally associated with “Northern-ness” or with the Arctic, are the ones Russia associates with itself in a process that aims at constructing its own Arctic identity in blurring the boundaries between the Arctic as such and Russia. On this subject, Geir Hønneland even concludes that the Arctic is more Russian than Russia itself.

In the collective unconsciousness, the Russian struggle for identity is often perceived as being linked to its unconventional relation with the West and, in this view, the only choice there is to make for Russia is between being willing to create relations with the West – to get closer to Europe – or to create a sense of national identity more focused on Russia itself.  In either case, Russian identity is construed as being a narrative in which Russia needs to other the West in order to have a more stable identity. In modern days, as Hønneland points out, the Arctic is the modern incarnation of Russia’s willingness to work with the West, especially when Vladimir Putin talks of the Arctic as “our common Arctic home.” In this mind-set, Russia is both depicted as being warry of the West – especially Norway in the Barents Region and Canada in the broader Arctic – but also as being willing to sit at the table with other Arctic nations.

On top of discussing four key Arctic issues from a Norwegian perspective (i.e. security, Russia, the environment, and the exploitation of natural resources in the Barents Sea), with “International Relations in the Arctic: Norway and the Struggle for Power in the New North,” Leif Christian Jensen aims at offering a new methodological and analytical framework to the field of discourse analysis and to social sciences (more so than Hønneland), thus the first two chapters of the book are heavily theoretical. These methodological chapters focus on how dominant discourses enable and disable actions both at the domestic and the international levels and “how socially oriented discourse analysis can be relevant to analyses of actual political issues.”  Indeed, Jensen himself states that one of his sub-aims is to demystify discourse analysis and make it more accessible (to make it “less frightening and more tempting”) to both scholars and students who are active in political science and other fields within social sciences. Therefore, Jensen’s book, which is an extended version of his doctoral thesis, could well be read with a non-Arctic approach if one was to focus on the broader theoretical framework. Nevertheless, the case study being the Norwegian ‘struggle’ to construct itself as an Arctic nation, being knowledgeable in Arctic matters helps to understand how Jensen’s analysis is to be applied.

Throughout the book, Jensen wants to demonstrate that discourse is constructive, and that, through discourse, it is possible to construct truth, meaning, and knowledge. To do so, he divided his book into eight chapters in which he covers subjects such as discourse analysis of Arctic policy debates and official Norwegian and Russian foreign policy discourses on the New North. Relying on a well-constructed database research analysis of four of the main Norwegian newspapers (i.e. Aftenposten, Dagens Næringsliv, Klassekampen, and Nordlys), Jensen researched how national identities are constructed in newspapers and texts written by those holding power. Furthermore, Jensen uses the example of Norwegian mineral resources exploitation to show to what extent discourses and narratives can be co-opted and how Norway’s main official discourse in the Barents Sea shifted from being environmentally-friendly to “drilling for sake of the environment.” Indeed, the argument of Norwegian environmentalists was co-opted and reversed by the pro-oil side whose argument has been to focus on others, such as Russia, and say that if Norway left it to other states or private businesses, they would do a worse job at being environmentally friendly. To link this with Hønneland’s theory, this can be seen as a Norwegian attempt to other Russia to justify its own Arctic identity. Jensen even goes further in his analysis in stating that this kind of shift in discourses is accentuated by the press and by official publications, through which the main discourse reinforces itself.

One of the most positive aspects of Jensen’s book – and something rare in academia – is Jensen’s strong commitment to connect with his readers and to involve them through the text itself. Far from the generally dry and anonymous academic approach, which, more often than not, tries to suppress any trace of temporality and of self in order to make a lasting contribution to the researched field, Jensen’s inclusion of himself and of his readers into the structure of his research manages to make it easier for the readers to relate and to understand the theoretical framework.

Both Hønneland and Jensen managed to avoid talking of the Arctic as the new hotspot in international affairs, and, to some extent, their down-to-earth approach to Arctic relations can be seen as an attempt to normalise Arctic issues and to hush the “rush for the Arctic” discourse and to finally put it to bed. Both books can also be seen as a successful attempt to show how important it is, in terms of international affairs, to understand how countries perceived themselves and how they would like to be seen on the international stage. Far from gathering dust on libraries’ shelves, these books will be interesting for students, academics, and anyone interested in Arctic relations, especially in Norwegian-Russian Arctic relations and how this relation is construed on both sides of the border. However, these books should not only be read by Arctic scholars, as they also have much to offer to those seeking to read more about identity and discourse analysis and how it can be used in nation building and in international affairs.

Steinar Imsen (ed.), The Norwegian Dominion and the Norse World c. 1100-c1400 & Taxes, Tributes and Tributary Lands in the Making of the Scandinavian Kingdoms in the Middle Ages (Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press, 2010 & 2011)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , ,

These two edited books constitute a set; they complement one another. Together they provide an excellent scholarly overview of much of the literature on the Vikings and Scandinavia. These will no doubt be standard sources for anyone interested in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic history. Fins will also benefit from this book, as will those in the United Kingdom interested in the early history of “the Danes” in Northumbria, Wessex, Essex and other Anglo-Saxon and Celtic lands. Irish, Welsh and Scottish historians will certainly want to be aware of this excellent body of work by pre-eminent scholars. A great body of literature is summarized and it would require someone extremely well versed in Scandinavian history to be able to discern if the proper emphasis is placed on contributions by leading academics of the past. I would definitely recommend that academic librarians order these books as key historical reference texts. Some of the twenty-six chapters involve some degree of cross-referencing, but by and large each chapter is relatively independent. Yet the books do “hang together.”

At the same time, the two books to some extent lack a coherent theoretical outlook. There is not much Comparative Historical Sociology (CHS) as opposed to idiographic history and “thick description.” Like many highly specialized works the editor and the authors assume quite a bit of previous knowledge so this is not likely to be a good set of books for an introductory course, except of course in Scandinavia itself (where students are more likely to have the background knowledge). The use of older letters for older words is appropriate but also presents a small obstacle to those who may not immediately want to have a detailed understanding. Nevertheless, separate chapters could be assigned in undergraduate and graduate history courses. For example, in a course in United Kingdom history the sections on Wales, Scotland and Ireland could benefit from several of the chapters in Steinar (2011).

If a CHS framework had been applied more rigorously then the distinction between “tribute” in ‘tributary lands” and “taxes” in taxation lands would have to be discussed in more detail. The definitions assumed by various authors are neither consistent nor entirely rigorous. For example Barbara Crawford writes about the skatts in the Orkneys and Caithness. In some parts of Norse Britain like the Hebrides and the Orkneys  (bordlands) a tribute was paid by the “earls” to the “kings” of Norway. But it is not entirely clear that the skatt system can be considered a “tax system” per se. Fifteenth century tribute systems were not necessarily tax systems in the narrow sense What Crawford discusses as “rentals” could equally be considered a kind of appanage system. In terms of sociological theory it might have been better to stick with the notion of a “tribute system” (Latin tributa). Of course there was a kind of evolution from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, but the subtle shifts are not investigated as systematically as some might wish. Nevertheless, Crawford does deal with some of the changes that took place over several hundred years. It may be that the geographically compact nature of the Orkneys and Caithness made it possible to introduce a tribute system which was somewhat more “advanced” toward a taxation system. There were 3,670 “pennylands” in Orkney and 18 pennylands were one “ounceland” (urislands). The idea of a monetary assessment based on ploughlands comes closer to a true taxation system, but it is not clear that was something which took place on a regular basis, or only for the construction of a cathedral (Saint Magnus).

The lack of Indices makes is somewhat difficult to cross-reference ideas. One would not necessarily expect one index for the two books, of course, but each book individually could benefit from a detailed Index. So many technical terms are used that a word list would have been helpful for those readers who do not fluently read Norwegian, Danish, Swedish or Icelandic!

The editor, Steinar Imsen, has certainly done an excellent job in compiling first class, relevant essays by top ranking scholars. It is not easy to get this degree of focus on detailed subject matter. Overall there is much agreement, although there are not any papers devoted to a discussion of theoretical or methodological problems per se. (Methodological comments are incidental and mostly contained in footnotes.) The 2010 volume is the result of a workshop on the Norse world held in Røros, Norway, in 2008. The 2011 volume is the product of a workshop held in Visby, Sweden. Colleagues were enthusiastic in discussing a common Scandinavian-Norse-Swedish-Danish-Scottish-Irish-Welsh-British world that spanned several hundreds of years (approximately 8th – 16th centuries). Anyone who is not already deeply immersed in pre-Medieval and Medieval Northern European history is bound to learn a great deal. For example, while I had some general knowledge of Sweden as a nation the short chapter by Thomas Lindkvist (Imsen 2010, pp. 251-262) made me much more aware of the differences between Svealand and Götaland. The Svear and the Göta of Västergötland and Östergötland were not always united. Indeed, the Götland provinces were “Christianized” earlier and were seemingly more connected to events in continental Europe, including the emergence of full blown “patrimonial” feudalism (Weber 1968). The link between the Roman Catholic Church and the Europeanized kingdoms of Sweden and Norway is not fully understood. But the existence of a traditional bureaucracy (Bakker 2010) in the form of bishoprics and nunneries, etc., seems to have been a key to the emergence of the type of “feudalism” usually discussed in textbooks. It is interesting to note that the Geatas discussed in Beowulf may or may not have been the Götar and Beowulf may not be a reliable historical source for the sixth century.

Some parts of these books are also directly relevant to German, Estonian and Russian historians. For example, the 12-13th century Danish “empire” in the Baltic is discussed in Chapter 12 by Jens Osesen. Apparently the Battle of Bjornhöved in Holstein in 1227 was a crucial watershed. The Danish expanded into Mecklenberg and Pomerania in what we now think of as Deutschland. (The Roman term Germania would have also included what we now consider the nation-state of Denmark.) Danish expansion also included a set of conquests to the East. The city of Reval was important to the sea route to Novgorod and was sold by King Valdemar IV Atterdag to the Teutonic order in 1346.

In a longer review I would want to go into detail concerning each chapter. Chapter 2 by Randi B. Woerdahl (in Imsen 2010: pp. 35-57) provides an excellent, detailed discussion of the historiography of the Norse world and the discussion about “Medieval history and the legitimization of nations and nation states” goes some distance toward starting to address sociological questions. He also briefly discusses alternative perspectives. There is a certain degree of conflict involved in studying nations retrospectively and once can easily fall victim to a kind of Whig History Fallacy, where what exists today is presumed to have been what would most likely evolve. Norman Davies (2014) has done a good job studying those “invisible” political realms in mainland Europe and Britain that we have now forgotten (e.g. the seventeen varieties of Burgundy/Burgundia). To some extent the Davies’ thesis about invisible kingdoms holds for many of the state systems discussed in these two volumes. They are “invisible” to the orindary educated person, who is usually better acquainted with the histories of “countries” that exist today as nation-states (e.g. Deutschland, Italia) but may not know much about pre-Medieval sub-regions (e.g. Angle-land, Saxonia, Batavia). The national history approach has little to offer for those interested in an objective reading of the evolution of societies from pre-modern capitalist to modern capitalist relations, much less from truly traditional to postmodern conditions.

Overall, I recommend these two volumes as solid intellectual contributions, with the minor caveats that: (1.) some more overview material would have been beneficial for class room use (including more and better quality maps) and (2.) a Comparative Historical Sociological (CHS) based on Weberian and Neo-Weberian sociological theories would have been useful. (Imsen 2010: Chapter 4 by Ian Beuermann has excellent maps, but in some chapters the quality is not 100% clear.) Perhaps there will be additional volumes and perhaps such new work might integrate the historical material a bit more directly with social science theories of the state, including political sociology, political studies, political science, comparative international relations studies, agrarian history, rural sociology and political economy (including Marxian political economy). These are not books that will be read by very many non-academic readers and yet some of the chapters would usefully be summarized in popular publications in various languages, not just English.

Perhaps Steinar Imsen sand some colleagues will write an introductory book which utilizes the abundant historical resources on which the twenty four other authors base their arguments. The volumes taught me a great deal but it took a certain amount of effort to get past the sometimes overly technical discussions of Scandinavian terms. (There is no glossary in either book.) The whole idea of Skattlands is not well known to those who are not specialized in “North Sea” and “Baltic” history, yet the concept of military tribute and corvee labour is directly relevant to many theories of pre-modern state systems. The main focus historically is the 12-15th centuries and it would most certainly be valuable to have another volume in the series that covers the earliest archaeological discovered (before the 9th century) and a fourth volume on the period that starts with the 16th century. I remember as a young boy wondering how it was possible for three tiny countries (the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark) to continue to exist. In the Cold War Era it seemed that only superpowers mattered. But now I more fully grasp the fact that the current nation-states which are small relative to other significant players on the world stage were at one time themselves small scale world super powers. The Netherlands had its Golden Age in the early seventeenth century. To some extent these volumes celebrate a kind of Scandinavian Golden Age  in the 12-15th centuries. Most of this history, unfortunately, is not widely taught. Perhaps the television series on the Vikings will help to promote more interest. We are inundated with books on the histories of England, Scotland, Ireland, and English-speaking parts of the world. But the importance of Norway, Denmark and Sweden is under-appreciated outside of Scandinavia.

References

Bakker, J. I. (Hans). 2010. “Deference and Democracy: Traditional and Modern Bureaucracy.” In Bryant (eds.) Festschrift for Irving Zeitlin. Lanham, Maryland (MD): Lexington Books (Roman and Littlefield).

Davies, Norman. 2014. Invisible Kingdoms. New York: Peguin?

Weber, Max. 1968 [1920]. Economy and Society. Tr. and ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, California (CA): University of California Press.

Gina Dahl, Libraries and Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Norway and the Outer World (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2014)

Book review (editorial review), , ,

In “Libraries and Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Norway and the Outer World,” Gina Dahl offers a marvelous insight into the intellectual life of Eighteenth-Century Norway by looking at library collections in Norway. This is a clever and engaging way to understand and analyze intellectual aspects of the Enlightenment.

Continue reading Gina Dahl, Libraries and Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Norway and the Outer World (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2014) →

Nation-building in the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Immigration Challenge

Conference proceedings (double non-blind peer review), , , , , , ,

Introduction

Scandinavia is the area where trust in political institutions and the role of the state is greatest in the world. Political actors in all three Scandinavian countries now compete for the honour of having created and developed the welfare state. It is such a central part of their self-understanding that this political framework can be said to have become a part of the Scandinavian national concept.

Continue reading Nation-building in the Scandinavian Welfare State: The Immigration Challenge →

Sven-Olof Olsson (ed.), Managing Crises and De-globalization. Nordic foreign trade and exchange 1919-39 (New York: Routledge, 2014 pbk.)

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Historical memory is unwelcome by people who have too much at stake in the short term to realise that they may have much more to lose in the medium and/or long term. Historical memory is also unwelcome by people who wish that economic history could fit neatly within the theoretical constructs that they favour because of ideological, political, moral or pecuniary commitments of theirs (cf. Francesco Boldizzoni, The Poverty of Clio: Resurrecting Economic History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

  Continue reading Sven-Olof Olsson (ed.), Managing Crises and De-globalization. Nordic foreign trade and exchange 1919-39 (New York: Routledge, 2014 pbk.) →

Mathias L. Pedersen & Jakob Christoffersen (eds.), Nordic Countries. Economic, Political and Social Issues (New York: Nova Science, 2012)

Book review (editorial review), , , ,

 

The book is somewhat tilted towards the presentation and analysis of economic issues within specific countries, rather than across the Nordic region. The reader is presented with a number of stimulating and topical country case studies that contributes useful background, insights and analysis on different aspects of Nordic economies and the Nordic welfare model. The chapters range from the very descriptive and general to papers with a high level of analytical and empirical sophistication.  Some of the chapters require good knowledge of specific disciplines and their methodological approaches to be of real value, whereas others could be read and easily understood by any reader; e.g. a subset of chapters on Sweden and its international trade sector would likely appeal primarily to a targeted audience familiar with the tools of econometric analysis. Still, the book takes the reader through an interesting and stimulating journey through a variety of topical landscapes.  For some readers the diversity in style and methodological approaches may be an unwanted distraction, whereas for others it does quite the contrary.

 

A connecting denominator across the chapters is the region: the Nordic region and the broad array of current issues, ranging from quality of childcare, occupational safety to highly theoretical issues surrounding the J-curve effect in commodity trade between Sweden and Germany, and the S-curve dynamics of commodity trade between Sweden and the United States, to mention a few.

 

The book is stimulating because of the variety of themes, and perhaps somewhat unique set of issues, and certainly from any standpoint an unlikely combination of topics. On the one hand, the book provides a good dose of stimulation, precisely because it is a somewhat unlikely combination of papers; yet at the same time is provides a certain degree of frustration – the theoretical and econometric papers take up a lot of space – and they are written by some of the same authors on similar topics, with a heavy focus on Sweden. There are three highly theoretical papers on Sweden´s international trade, with some similarity among author teams; although impressive pieces of analytical works, this makes the structure and discussion unavoidably somewhat predictable, and some readers might feel tempted to skip ahead to the discussion and conclusion in those cases.

 

Chapter 1, on “Denmark: Lessons from the Global Leader in Straw-to-Energy”, presents a discussion of the straw-to-energy technology in Denmark, and sets out to identify and analyze factors of Danish success in this field. The chapter and its case studies are highly descriptive and would probably have been more interesting and useful with more emphasis dedicated to analysis. The chapter is based on reports and publications on straw-to-energy, and a set of interviews. The chapter is unfortunately flooded with countless small details that tend to provide more confusion than clarification.  This may be interesting for some readers who are specifically interested in this industry and in information on straw heating, while for others it makes it a challenge to get a sense of the main ideas the author wants to present or convey. A concise and not so surprising list of the major factors of Danish success in straw-to-energy is presented as part of the conclusion, including: political and financial support, nationally supported energy research, developed straw-to-energy technology.  It might have been useful with a discussion of case studies structured more around highlighting these points. It clearly represents a powerful example of a Danish success story, but lacks concrete detail on how it can be duplicated in other places and across the Nordic region.

 

Chapter 2, on “Exchange-Rate Volatility and Sweden´s Trade with Germany: Evidence from Industry Data”, provides an impressive, well-focused and highly theoretical and empirical analysis of trade between Sweden and Germany using a large data set from 1997-2010. While interesting, on the down side, a large part of the chapter is dedicated purely to the presentation of econometric results. This structure may fail to capture the full attention of a broader audience.  Also, the results are not that surprising, namely that small industries are more likely to be affected by exchange rate volatility, and that larger exporters in Germany are able to insulate themselves and hence experience less volatility – this through imperfect competition and various methods of hedging.  The chapter might have benefited from a detailed elaboration of this not so surprising finding – e.g. a description of what types of imperfect competition are referred to. This would probably have made it a more interesting read. 

 

Chapter 3, on “The Norwegian Quota Reform and the Fear of Incompetent Women”, is an interesting, well-researched and important piece of research on the gender representation on company boards in Norway. It employs a solid method and makes use of a sizeable sample size for the interviews, but the empirical work could have been elaborated on. The conclusion is not all that surprising: the results show that new women board members appear to be and are perceived to be as competent as other directors, and hence, the research rejects the human capital theory as an explanation for the low number of women directors prior to the reform of 2003 in Norway – when legislation was passed to specify gender representation on company boards. But one cannot help but want more detail and to ask: How does this compare to other places? Is this a general trend, or to what extent is it specific to the case of Norway and its changed legislation?

 

Chapter 4, entitled “Development of Quality in the Child Care in Denmark – Legislation, Culture and Daily Practices”, discusses the factors that constitute quality in childcare in Denmark.  The study presents a longer list of results rather than focusing on a smaller handful of results that could have been discussed in more detail.  One of the many findings is the increased focus on centralized political goals, specific learning objectives, testing of children etc. since the new 2007 law in Denmark – and how this has negatively affected care in a number of areas. The findings are as important as the debate itself and they certainly raise a number of critical issues. Yet, it would have been more useful with some reference made to the rest of the Nordic region.

 

Chapter 5, on “The Ambivalent Mentality of a Lilliput Nation: Ethnic Relations and Intercultural Learning Among Danish International Workers”, sets out to analyse what the authors refer to as a “paradox” of the difficulties of maintaining a small-scale welfare society despite the overwhelming forces of globalization. They go on to analyse how this “paradox” affects Danish international workers´ abilities to manage internationally and learn from their foreign surroundings.  One might question this “paradox”.  Is there really such a “paradox”? Also, the chapter makes a series of strong statements that seem poorly formulated, appear weakly substantiated and that need further support to be more convincing.

 

Chapter 6, entitled “Is There a J-Curve Effect in Commodity Trade between Sweden and Germany?”, investigates the bilateral trade between Sweden and Germany by looking at 124 industries – a time series analysis for the period 1963-2009.  The analysis finds little support for the J-curve effect, i.e. that a slow adjustment process after a currency depreciation leads to a deterioration of the trade balance.  However, the study does find some evidence of a J-curve effect for a larger number of heavily traded commodities, which the authors suggest may be explained by larger industries being more sensitive to fluctuations in the Swedish krona. The chapter comes across as very methodologically sound, and the econometric approach and tests are appropriate.  Since this is not a chapter in the journal Econometrica, what may be missing to make this of interest to a broader audience would be a more poignant explanation of the results in simple and plain words.  What does this mean? What is the significance? What are the implications for the future of Swedish international trade? Without these more grounded considerations this chapter risks being of interest to a more narrow and specialized audience.

 

Chapter 7, on “Occupational Safety in Finland”, provides a useful and important review of research carried out in Finland related to occupational safety. One of the critical findings of the review is that bullying is a common phenomenon in Finnish workplaces, and that women and healthcare workers in particular are subjected to workplace violence.  As an outsider one is likely to want to know more, i.e. how does this compare to other Nordic countries?  Since the book is about Nordic countries, it would have been useful if some comparison had been drawn to other Nordic countries or cases.  The lack of comparison makes the review slightly less interesting.  Also, why has violence been increasing at the workplace? And how does this trend compare to other Nordic countries?  If it is only a trend in Finland, what explains it?  The literature list is comprehensive and useful for anyone who wishes to conduct research on issues of workplace safety and bullying.

 

Chapter 8, on “Co-operation between Finnish Authorities in the event of Animal Disease: A Rhetorical Comparison of Three Laws from Finnish Legislation”, analyses the hierarchy of authorities in animal health.  Unfortunately, the chapter is not an easy read and the examples presented are not all that well explained. It is also somewhat unclear what the exact objective of the paper is and what the main conclusions are.  Still, the issues raised are important, and the research seems to contribute to filling certain gaps in knowledge, and from this perspective it qualifies as a unique and welcome addition, albeit incomplete. 

 

Chapter 9, on “The S-Curve Dynamics of Commodity Trade between Sweden and the United States”, discusses the S-curve effect. One cannot help but get a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of results, with up toward 12 pages of lists of trade figures and graphics.  One cannot but wonder how useful those are to the average reader. They may be more confusing and only serve to distract from the real message of the research.  This is the third chapter on Sweden and its trade sector. First there is a general analysis on exchange rate volatility, and then two chapters on the J-curve and the S-curve respectively.  Could these chapters have been linked somehow, which might have made more sense – with a general introduction on Sweden and its international trade sector?  The topic is interesting and stimulating, and as in the case of the two other chapters by this first author, it also appears very methodologically sound.  Based on a large sample size and employing and using econometric techniques, the paper finds that there is evidence of an S-curve effect in half of the 92 industries surveyed.  An interesting result is that for the largest industries in the empirical test (accounting for 50 percent of the trade between Sweden and the U.S.), evidence suggests that a real depreciation of the Swedish krona will increase international competitiveness in trade with the U.S.. Some discussion on what exactly this means might have been useful.

 

Chapter 10, on “Assessing Evidence of Swedish Cartel´s Longevity: 1956-1993”, presents an empirically sophisticated paper on the legal formal cartel contracts in Sweden with an examination of the structure and factors that determine their longevity. A historical and econometric analysis is presented using data for the period 1956 to 1993. It is empirically solid work and also highly theoretical. The regression results are perhaps not that surprising, but nevertheless interesting to study: for example, the results suggest that cartels are longer lived under horizontal and vertical restrictions than those that are organized under horizontal restrictions only. Results also suggest that the presence of effective regulation does not increase the longevity of cartels relative to those cartels where regulation is absent.  It is found that cartels tend to break during downswings in foreign and domestic markets. The strength of this paper – as with the other papers in this book on foreign trade – is the empirical presentation. Unfortunately, common for all of them is that the discussion is limited.  Given the nature of the book (and it is not an econometric journal article), one would have expected more in terms of a basic explanation of the empirical and regression results in view of the presumably relatively broad audience – and perhaps more on what these results mean for the Nordic countries in general, now and in the future.

 

I think it would have greatly enriched the book if there had been an attempt to synthesize and find or explore overarching themes or trends, and also, if efforts had been made within individual chapters to connect the conclusions to literature on other Nordic countries, and possibly to compare across national borders where appropriate. Some readers might be left wondering whether the results of the case studies are unique to the specific country investigated, or to what extent they are “Nordic”, and if so, how and why.

 

I would recommend this book to those readers who are interested in a broad range of issues and in particular those who are looking for a snapshot of a range of different and important topics in the Nordic countries.  It is a stimulating and interesting book, and one comes away having learned something useful. Still, given the diversity of approaches and the thematic areas introduced, the book would have benefited from a concluding chapter highlighting some connecting points between the different thematic areas of the ten chapters, and maybe with a discussion of some overarching conclusions that can be drawn about Nordic society and welfare and its place in society.  What lessons can non-Nordic countries learn from these case studies? To what extent are they success stories? 

Per Eliasson, KG Hammarlund, Erik Lund & Carsten Tage Nielson (eds.), Historie didatik i Norden: del 1, historiemetvetanda – historiebruk (Malmö & Halmstad: Malmö högskola and Högskolan i Halmstad, 2012)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , ,

The challenge is tackled in two volumes; “historiemetvetanda – historiebruk” [history usage] rewieved here;  and “historisk kunskap” [historical knowledge], in a separate volume, not covered here.

The authors constitute a group who have a background in history teaching and research in history teaching. They cover all three levels of schooling, from compulsory school through upper-secondary and university level.

Continue reading Per Eliasson, KG Hammarlund, Erik Lund & Carsten Tage Nielson (eds.), Historie didatik i Norden: del 1, historiemetvetanda – historiebruk (Malmö & Halmstad: Malmö högskola and Högskolan i Halmstad, 2012) →

Erik S. Reinert & Francesca Lidia Viano (eds.), Thorstein Veblen. Economics for an Age of Crises (London: Anthem, 2012)

Book review (editorial review), , ,

Frequent yet allegedly unexpected crises, the sudden meltdowns of recently praised free-market ‘tigers’, and large-scale social unrest keep surfacing in the post-Thatcherite world of ‘free-trade agreements’, ‘globalisation’, ‘deregulation’, ‘privatisation’, monetary ‘great moderation’ and similar catchwords for the so-called age of ‘neo-liberalism’. Given such circumstances, a few mainstream economists have been willing to reconsider at least some of the premises upon which their discipline has operated and to rediscover the long-forgotten wisdom of a famous but largely uninfluential mind, whose contribution to the discipline’s textbooks has been reduced to a class of odd goods that moneyed people want all the more the costlier they get (i.e. so-called ‘Veblen goods’).

In this perspective, part four (of four) in Reinert’s and Viano’s book contains six exemplary chapters, penned by five seasoned academics and two outstanding young students, that focus upon the usefulness of Veblen’s diverse and different categories of thought for today’s economists, legislators and policy-makers.

Geoffrey M. Hodgson’s “Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics” compares mainstream economics’ current usage of notions that were crucial for Veblen—such as “institutions” and “evolution” (283)—with Veblen’s original understanding of them. His conclusion is that the former, corrupted by rational choice theory and a simplistic interpretation of Darwinism, has reduced these notions to “apologetic” descriptors within a grossly distorted picture of “market competition” that pleases the adherents of “laissez faire” economics (292). On the contrary, Veblen’s understanding of them is much more nuanced, empirically perceptive, open to revision, and disciplinarily ecumenical. He therefore concludes: “We can still learn a great deal from his writings and build on them for the future.” (292)

Paul Burkander’s “Veblen’s Words Weighed” dissects the full complexity of meaning in a famously convoluted passage in Veblen’s essay “Why is Economics is Not an Evolutionary Science”, showing its author’s commitment to replace “neoclassical economics” (297) with a novel approach that may truly “scrutinise the economic actions of man” (300).

L. Randall Wray’s “The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen’s Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes’s Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis” brings three heterodox classics into dialogue, highlighting mutual similarities and differences, so as to provide insights in the structural economic conditions that do actually cause financial crashes like the 2007 one.

James K. Galbraith’s “Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference” makes use of a largely neglected concept in Veblen’s understanding of socio-economic phenomena, i.e. predation, in order to explain the historical origins and the well-tested beneficial functions of regulation within market economies. As he writes: “A functioning structure of regulation is the instrument… of that part of the business community that wishes, and chooses, to play by a common set of rules” that keep market economies from “predatory self-destruction.” (327)

Sophus A. Reinart’s and Francesca Lidia Viano’s “Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste” addresses another economic notion, i.e. “expectations” and how Veblen was capable of explaining its centrality in “systemic financial collapses” as well as “patterns of individual consumption.” (329)

Robert H. Frank’s “Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important than Ever” takes its moves from Veblen’s enduring textbook relevance in the very specific field of positional goods. Then it proceeds to emphasising his relevance vis-à-vis the much more general claim that “evaluations of all types depend heavily on social context”, hence on the necessity for “economic models” to stop assuming “that consumption decisions take place in social isolation” and start differentiating amongst the ways in which social factors affect economic evaluations and actual choices. (358)

Elements of the fourth part of the book colour the third one, in which three more social scientists explore in as many chapters Veblen’s importance for the field of politics.

Sidney Plotkin’s “Thorstein Veblen and the Politics of Predatory Power” focuses upon Veblen’s understanding of predation in human affairs and its applicability to phenomena such as social coercion, alienation, instrumental rationality, warfare and institutional development.

Stephen Edgell’s “Veblen, War and Peace” tries to fill a gap in the scholarly literature about Veblen, since the economists interested in his work are said to have largely neglected Veblen’s studies on World War I and the ensuing peace agreements. By doing so, Edgell does not only offer an account of this lesser known component of Veblen’s legacy, but also an application of Veblen’s insights to the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

Eyüp Özveren’s “Veblen’s ‘Higher Learning’: The Scientist as Sisyphus in the Iron Cage of a University” approaches Veblen’s research from the perspective of Veblen’s assessment of the history of modern sciences, the development of academic institutions, and the failure of the latter to be truly beneficial to society at large. According to Özveren’s “account, Veblen was highly sceptical of the universities’ ability to produce skilled and constructive minds, because of enduring archaic habits of thought, ritual functions in costly displays of wealth and status, enslavement to short-term business goals, and the prevalence of institutional competition over institutional cooperation. Additionally, Özveren’s account offers a depiction of academics as Sisyphus-like figures, who engage in the production of knowledge and fame that are bound to be overcome by the future academics that they nurture and instruct.

Parts one and two of the book belong primarily to ‘Veblenite’ historiography, as they deal with Veblen’s personal biography, his family and cultural background, his education in the US, and his own controversial teaching experiences. Of the six chapters comprised in these two parts, the readers of Nordicum-Mediterraneum are going to find the first four (i.e. part one of the book) of particular interest, for they focus upon Veblen’s Norwegian and Scandinavian background, especially in the context of late-19th-century Nordic immigrant communities in North America. These four chapters being: Kåre Lunden’s “Explaining Veblen by his Norwegian Background: A Sketch”; Terje Mikael Hasle Joranger’s “Valdres of the Upper Midwest: The Norwegian Background of the Veblen Family and their Migration to the United States”; Knut Odner’s “New Perspectives on Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian”; and Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley’s “The Physical World of Thorstein Veblen: Washington Island and Other Intimate Spaces”.

The book hereby reviewed is the result of the conference held in Valdres, Norway, upon the 150th anniversary of Veblen’s birth. It contains essays that differ considerably in length, topic, methodology, and reader-friendliness. Most of them presuppose a modicum of familiarity with Veblen’s work. Therefore, this volume cannot be recommended as an introduction to it. Rather, taken together, the book’s essays offer a very interesting token of Veblen scholarship and an eloquent exemplification of the cross-disciplinary appeal of Veblen’s genius. Furthermore, the essays comprised in the first part of the book reflect extensively upon the Nordic elements in Veblen’s life experience and intellectual interests, and should appeal to our journal’s Scandinavian readership, particularly in Norway.

R. Bohlin, De Osynliga. Det Europas fattiga arbetarklass; M. Linton, De hatade. Om radikalhögerns måltavlor; B. Elmbrant, Europas stålbad. Krisen som slukar välfärden och skakar euron (All titles by Atlas, Stockholm, 2012)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

The feminist journalist Rebecca Bohlin has looked into the working and living conditions of the least paid workers within the service sector, although reminding to us that many other jobs in different sectors meet similar problems. She has met cleaners, kitchen attendants and cashiers in Stockholm, London, Hamburg and at the same time has interviewed scholars and as well politicians and union representatives about the rise in income inequality and the worsening of working conditions, across Europe and in Sweden.

And to Sweden indeed is devoted the first chapter (Hur mår RUT?). The question of rising inequalities has become hot after 2007, when tax deductions for domestic service (RUT) were introduced, with the argument that the black market was to be stopped. In fact, however, according to the unions and to some research, the outcome has been an increasing in the number of workers (often asylum seekers or anyway migrants, very often women) exploited and with no safeguard: their formal job contract is legal, but their actual working conditions are definitely different, and for the worse. Yet in Sweden, as Bohlin acknowledges, living conditions of the low-paid workers are better that in most other countries.

In the second chapter (Så pressas lönerna neråt) Bohlin analyzes, again through witnesses and interviews, migration policy at the EU level and in some of its member States. She insists on the paradox of a rhetoric stressing the need of labour force from outside Europe, in order to face demographic challenges and to make companies more “globalized”, while at the same time the actual policy is based on a military defence of the “fortress Europe”, at the cost of thousands of human lives every year. And those who succeed in reaching Europe are often exploited both economically and, when women, sexually. And that even in a country that is a world master in workers’ rights and gender equality such as Sweden.

How are trade unions tackling this backward trend to a degree of workers’ exploitation similar to that in the 19th century? Around this unavoidable question the third chapter (Facket famlar efter en ny solidaritet) is built. The answer is not at all self-evident; on the contrary, here one goes on attempt by attempt. However, what comes out from the talks that the author has had with union leaders and members, in Sweden and in the UK, as well as with scholars, is that a trade union like the Swedish one, service-oriented, is not well-equipped to face the challenges that labour movements all over the world have to meet. More interesting it seems the experience of the “Social Movement Unionism”, a strategy that has been tested in South America and is made up of a mix of mobilization, learning, dialogue with local society, negotiations – and protest actions. Exactly what many all over Europe – either workers or unemployed, migrant or local – call for.

 

An even darker side of Europe is the subject of Magnus Linton’s work, that he describes in his Introduction as a book on “majorities and minorities, absolutism and relativism, boarders and lack of them, fantasy and reality”. The author, well-known in Sweden for his reports after the carnage in Utøya, has carried out an inquiry about right-wing radicalism in three European countries: Hungary, the Netherlands and Norway, moving from the awareness that the current economic crisis increases its appeal. Linton has met the main targets of xenophobic and neo-nazi groups, respectively Roma people in Hungary, muslims in the Netherlands and left-wing intellectuals in Norway. The first section (Parasiterna), after reminding shortly the persecution of Roma in history (culminating with their, neglected, massacre during World War II) and the recent deportation of Roma in countries such as France, Italy and Sweden, introduces the reader to the disturbing world of the Hungarian neo-fascist party Jobbik (Movement for a better Hungary), whose programme is openly “roma-centered”, so to say, and that in 2010 established itself as one of the main political forces in the country with 17% of votes. Jobbik’s growing influence resulted in a situation that Linton, with reference to what happened in the municipality of Gyöngyöspata, tells in the following way: “in 2011 in the middle of Europe fascists in uniform marched and families belonging to one of the poorest and most persecuted minorities in the continent were forced to escape what otherwise would have turned into a pogrom”. And Gyöngyöspata was only the beginning. However, the political scientist Zsolt Enyedi, interviewed by Linton, points out that these developments in Hungary were at the same time astonishing and predictable. Their roots can be found in a historical process starting from the fall of the Berlin wall; since then, populism has been a constant presence in Hungarian life and in the end has exploded due to the economic crisis. The fact that in 2010 the nationalist and authoritarian party Fidesz won 2/3 of the votes has made the situation even worse and transformed Hungary into a stronghold of radical Right in Europe.

Another country, another scapegoat: in the Netherlands, as it is well-known, the thesis that “our” problems could be solved if only “we” got rid of Muslims has found one of its most prominent champions, i.e. Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party and major pointer for Dutch politics for years (see the section: Ockupanterna). Though making sure to distinguish himself from people like Anders Berg Breivik (who pointed at Wilders as his ideological source of inspiration) by stressing his own democratic attitude, Wilders has steadily run down Islam, equating it with Fascism. Together with Pim Fortuyn (murdered in 2002 by a left-wing extremist), he has personified the idea that multiculturalism is a luxury only the privileged few can afford and has transformed the Netherlands into the headquarters of islamophobia in Europe.

The Dutch historian Thomas von der Dunk, here quoted, urges to take into account that politics’ highest aim is economic security, as well as the capability for society to accept cultural uncertainty; but when the former decreases, then the need for a strong cultural identity rises.

Roma people and Muslims are easy scapegoats in a continent affected by geopolitical and economic turbulences; but how came that in the rich and enlightened Norway a right-wing extremist killed more than 70 young left-wing activists? What Berg Breivik aims at with his double attack (a bomb in Oslo and the carnage on the Utøya island) was, as Linton explains, to murder at the same time three generations of “betrayers” (hence the title of the section, Förrädarna), i.e. three generations of Social Democrats: the forthcoming (the young activists who met in Utøya), the present (the governmental headquarter in the capital), and the former (Gro Harlem Brudtland, former prime minister, who escaped assassination in the island due to a delay in Breivik Berg’s plan).

What has been betrayed are Norwegian culture and identity, quite obviously. Breivik Berg defines “cultural Marxism” what could otherwise be summarized as “politically correct”, in other words the idea that there are some topics that cannot be questioned, above all feminism and multiculturalism. Linton points out that coinciding with the perhaps unstoppable march of right-wing extremism in Europe is the discontent caused by what has been perceived as the hegemony of political correctedness, which has become more and more centered upon universities. After all, right-wing radicalism is not interested in discussing rationally a question (which is supposed to be the academic approach) but, on the contrary, in imposing its own understanding of reality. And it is succeeding in doing this. Linton recalls our attention to the fact that what is striking in Breivik Berg is not his insanity, but how much he reflects stereotypes and plot-syndromes related to Islam that unfortunately are represented in more or less all the European parliaments (as well as in the EU one).     

 

Not even the book by Elmbrant, one of the most prominent Swedish journalists, is intended to bring comfort to the reader. Here as well the impact of the economic downturn is looked into in a European perspective, yet with a particular attention to countries such as Greece (see chapter 1, Ett land faller sönder) and Ireland (chapter 3, Irland på liv och död). In chapter 2 (Hur hamnade vi här?) the author follows the making of the Euro and then compares the faith of two countries, Ireland and Iceland; both hit by the crisis, but the latter (outside the common currency) recovering better. Italy is not at all forgotten in this account: the doubts about its financial soundness have been recurrent amongst EU – and German in particular – leaders, for many years. However, Elmbrant warns (chapter 4, Skenbilden av krisen) against those, in Brussels as well as Berlin and Paris, who blame upon some countries ? the Southern European ones primarily ? the European financial difficulties, as the problem were simply that if one spends too much, then one has to pay back sooner or later. Elmbrant is well aware that Greece, with all the stereotypes surrounding it, has worked as a perfect scapegoat, but insists on the European dimension of the economic crisis. The trouble indeed is not the Greeks’ unreliability, but the EU powerlessness in the face of much bigger transnational financial powers. In this connection, it needs to be said that left-wing parties have definitely not been united and consistent in their (often late) condemnation of the abuse of power from private banks and finance at large.

It cannot miss, in this critical report about the EU state of health, a chapter on Angela Merkel, significantly entitled She who decides (5, Hon som bestämmer) and on Germany’s hegemonic role. The outcome of financial powers’ and Germany’s supremacy are described in chapter 6 (Europas stålbad), again focusing mostly on Southern Europe, but raising a more general question: the changing role of the Nation-State. Here Elmbrant mentions an article on The New Left Review by the German social scientist Wolfgang Streeck as crucial: the dismantlement of Europe’s social policies has restricted the ability of the State as far as mediating between citizens’ rights and Capital’s diktats is concerned, and by this move increased further the latter’s authoritativeness as well. There have been massive demonstrations against budget-restriction policies, at least in Greece, Spain and Portugal (chapter 7, De unga på marsch), but Elmbrant does not forget that up to now it is the Radical Right the political actor who seems to have taken more advantage from the crisis, and not the Left. Are the European Central Bank and Merkel right when presenting austerity as the only way out of the crisis or can young people protesting in Athens, Madrid and Lisbon point out to an alternative? The last two chapters are built around this question. 

After summarizing the different proposals currently discussed in the EU (in the end all related to the dilemma: more or less unity among member States? See chapter 8, Stopp i Brysseltrafiken), Elmbrant closes his report by handling the question of the future of the common currency (chapter 9, Har euron en framtid?). After looking at expert analysis and people’s mood his answer (well reflecting Swedish attitude to the EU) is: the Euro is doomed to collapse ? after all it has been a mistake from the beginning ? with consequences that in some cases will prove to be devastating.  And thinking at what is going on in many European countries we can easily believe that this apocalyptic scenario is not simply a kind of snobbery from the rich Nordic countries.   

Juha Manninen and Friedrich Stadtler (eds.), The Vienna Circle and the Nordic Countries. Networks and Transformations of Logical Empiricism (Vienna: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook vol.14, Springer, 2010)

Review essay (editorial review), , , , ,

In the years preceding the Second World War, European philosophy was at the high point of its intellectual vitality. Everywhere philosophical societies promoted a dense network of connections among scholars, with international meetings and strong links among individuals and associations. In this context, the Vienna Circle emerges as one of the many, also if probably the most well-known, centres of diffusion of a new style of philosophy, closely linked to the new logic and with a strongly empiricist attitude. At the same time, empiricism, formal logic and psychology constituted (and still constitute) the common background of most of the Nordic philosophers, a background which permitted them to develop connections with Vienna’s cultural environment (well known also for the work of psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, but also Charlotte and Karl Bühler). This piece of history, although limited to the connection between Nordic philosophy and Vienna Circle, helps to clarify the history of European philosophy, and the sharp difference of Nordic philosophy in respect of the development of philosophy in Southern and Central Europe in the half a century following the Second World War. The editors say in the introduction:

 

. . . one of the least known networks of the Vienna Circle is the “Nordic connection”. This connection had a continuing influence for many of the coming decades, beginning with the earliest phase of the Vienna Circle and continuing with a number of adaptations and innovations well into contemporary times. Some of the individual members of this network are remembered, such as Georg Henrik von Wright. But little attention is now given to the fact that these individual members communicated intensively with each other as well as with the Vienna Circle and its international continuation in the Unity of Science movement.

 

The volume here reviewed, dedicated to Arne Naess, is intended to fill the historical gaps and provide a more complete picture of this rich network, which even the Second World War was unable to destroy. In what follows, I will not discuss the second part of the volume, which contains a paper on the unit and disunity of science by Gerard Holton and a series of reviews of relevant books on different topics related to the Vienna Circle. I will instead offer some remarks concerning the main characters of our story, that is: Eino Kaila (1890-1958), Arne Naess (1912-2009), Jørgen Jørgensen (1894-1969) and Åke Petzäll (1901-1957), who founded the Swedish Journal Theoria. However, instead of following the order of the individual articles, I will reconstruct the content of the volume dealing with individual countries, to see their relative contribution to the continuity of the philosophical network in the Nordic Countries.

 

 

From Norway to Denmark

 

I begin with Norway, not least because the volume is dedicated to Arne Naess. Arne Naess is a typical example of a European Intellectual of pre-war times: he studied in Paris and Oslo and went to Vienna in 1934-36 to write his dissertation on Knowledge and Scientific Behavior (published in Oslo 1936). Then he participated in the third Conference on the Unity of Science in Paris, discussing with Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and Otto Neurath (1882-1945) about truth. He then went on to Berkeley and returned to Oslo, where he was active in the anti-Nazi movement, and he continued to work there after the war, both as a professor and a political activist; he became a UNESCO representative in the East-West conflict, and was a promoter of the international peace movement and later of the ecological movement. Meanwhile he published frequently in Theoria, worked as editor of Synthese and founded and edited Inquiry. Although primarily thought of as a founding father of Norwegian philosophy, Arne Naess may be also considered as central in the development of the Social Sciences in Norway. As Fredrik W. Thue remarks in “Empiricism, Pragmatism, Behaviorism”, shortly after the German invasion, Arne Naess gathered an interdisciplinary group of students to work on foundations, and, after the war, the agenda of the group changed from philosophy towards social research: Naess’ epistemological program, and the experience of resistance against Fascism brought about a strong interest in the practical and normative challenges to postwar society, and an abandonment of his links with Logical Empiricism. Thue analyses Naess’ influence on the organization of studies (with psychology, logic and the history of philosophy as mandatory for all university students in Norway) and his naturalistic behavioral epistemology, nearer to American sociology and antagonistic to Popper’s “principles” of the Open Society. According to Naess, “Spontaneous reactions of empathy between humans presented deeper and more universal moral wellsprings than philosophical dogmas” (p.222). The paper tries to show the strong connections on the one hand between Naess and his pupils – where much space is given to Stein Rokkan (1921-1979) and his criticism of Karl Popper (1902-1994) – and on the other hand between his group and the American liberal-progressive tradition, following the path of John Dewey (1859-1952). From this connection a new attention to sociology and social reform arose.

 

Thue devotes too little space to exploring the links between the intellectual environment around Arne Naess and the optimistic faith that society could be improved by means of an interplay between economic growth, social welfare and political democracy. Hints about the “liberal innocence” of Naess are unfortunately not adequately explained. In any case, an anthology is unlikely to give a coherent account of the career of a complex philosopher. The idea of Naess’ progressive abandonment of Logical Empiricism is rejected by another paper of the anthology, by Friedrich Stadler: “Arne Naess – Dogmas and Problems of Empiricism”. According to Stadler, although Naess apparently stopped working inside the frameworks of traditional Logical Empiricism and the Unity of Science program after World War II – mainly on account of his interest in the social sciences and the ecological movement – he had kept in continuous touch with his Logical Empiricist roots, for instance in his correspondence with Neurath (up to 1945) and with Carnap (up to 1969) and in his many papers on A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) and Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). Although his criticism of Logical Empiricism anticipates the famous critique of Quine (1908-2000) in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, Stadler shows how Arne Naess never abandoned Logical Empiricism as a style of thinking and, especially in his later years, returned to his former ideas. A discussion of the 10 volumes of Naess’ selected works confirms the complexity of his overall philosophy. Besides, although Naess taught in Oslo, we cannot forget the relevance of the studies on Wittgenstein at the Universtiy of Bergen, which later hosted the Wittgenstein Archives.

 

While philosophy in Norway tended to be also closely linked to sociological studies, the role of Finland in the development of philosophy seems to be the most “foundational” of all other countries. Long before Arne Naess gave Norway a steady logical and empiricist foundation in philosophy, Eino Kaila was building a steady ground for cultivating analytic philosophy and logic in Finland as in Sweden and Norway. As Juha Manninen writes in the paper, “Between the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The philosophical Teachers of Georg Henrik von Wright”, the logic textbook used by Kaila for many years was the Abriss der Logistik by Rudolf Carnap, and many books by Carnap were recommended to the students, including Henrik Von Wright (1916-2003). The curriculum included the study of Wittgenstein (1989-1951), mainly the Tractatus. Besides chairing a logic club with advanced students, including von Wright himself and Erik Stenius (1911-1990), Kaila influenced Swedish philosophers, criticizing their psychologism in a strong address given at the University of Uppsala. Together with Jørgen Jørgensen, he convinced the appointments committee in Oslo to give the chair of philosophy to the young Arne Naess in 1939. Actually Kaila’s philosophical career begun when he wrote to Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), who suggested that he contact Moritz Schlick (1882-1936). Kaila had some correspondence with Schlick, who then asked him to come to Vienna in 1929. Kaila had already written on Shlick, Einstein and Carnap’s Aufbau. Carnap found Kaila’s criticism surprising and interesting, and over a long period the two philosophers met several times. Kaila insisted on the importance of inductive inference and probability, while Carnap was – at the time – very distant from this topic that was to become a primary concern during his last period. Perhaps it was Kaila who moved Carnap in that direction. Kaila’s attention to induction culminated in his Finnish translation of Hume’s Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding. His critical book on Carnap’s Aufbau was discussed in Berlin by Reichenbach and by the young Carl Hempel (1905-1997), and later in Vienna by Hans Hahn (1879-1934), Felix Kaufmann (1895-1949), Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) and Rudolf Carnap, who reviewed the book in Erkenntnis. Kaila went many times to Vienna and collaborated with Charlotte and Karl Bühler, defining what it is now called “the Kaila effect” – the attention area of the two eyes of a moving person from a child, who typically did not use that area if one eye was covered. (p.58). Between psychology and logic, working on intentionality, Kaila was always critical of Carnap, since his review of Carnap’s Logical Syntax; he did not completely accept physicalism and always asked for a space for a phenomenological language dealing with subjective experience.

 

As an historical influence, Kaila was also important for the development of the Swedish journal Theoria, founded in 1935. Kaila suggested that Theoria could take the place of Erkenntnis, which was in difficulty for political reasons. In fact, Erkenntnis lasted two more years before being provisionally closed; its contributors went mostly to the US, where they contributed to new journals, such as Philosophy of Science (founded in 1934) and the Journal of Symbolic Logic (founded in 1936). We will come back later to the history of Theoria.

 

Kaila’s influence in philosophy in Finland was wide; in the book we find reference to two main figures among his students, Oiva Toivo Ketonen (1913-2000) and Georg Henrik Von Wright. Ketonen was more devoted to logic than philosophy and went in 1938 to Göttingen, where he met Heinrich Sholtz (1884-1987). In Göttingen he studied under Gerhard Gentzen (1909-1945), and then received his PhD in logic during the 1944 bombing of Helsinki. In the paper “Young Ketonen and His Supreme Logical Discover”, Michael von Boguslawski suggests that the impact of the war was a reason for Ketonen to pay more attention to ethics than to philosophy of science. However his early logical work was well received: Haskell Curry (1900-1982) said that Ketonen’s work, extending Gentzen’s calculus, was the best thing in proof theory since Gentzen. Paul Bernays (1888-1977) and Arend Heyting (1898-1980) also appreciated his work. Ketonen remained in contact with Kaila, working on topics such as the problem of analytic and a priori knowledge.

 

However, the influence of Kaila was much more relevant to Georg Henrik von Wright especially at the beginning of von Wright’s career, when Kaila compelled the young student to study logic and gave him English texts to read. Certainly he was also influential in von Wright’s interest in induction and probability. In 1939, the year of the Russian invasion of Finland, Kaila (then in Helsinki after having taught in Turku) published his introduction to logical empiricism, Human Knowledge, translated into Swedish by von Wright. Despite the invasion, Finland survived as an independent democracy and was able to keep its leading scholars linked together, including a new arrival from the US, Jaakko Hintikka (1929-), described by von Wright (who had met Hintikka in Cambridge) as a “a very gifted young man”. In short, as Manninen says in his paper, “there is an unbroken lineage from Kaila and the Vienna circle to present day philosophy in Finland”.

 

More on Kaila’s philosophy can be found in the papers by Ilkka Niiniluoto, “Kaila’s Critique of Vitalism”, and by Arto Siitonen, “Kaila and Reichenbach as Protagonists Of Naturphilosophie”. Hintikka, without whom it is almost impossible to speak of Finnish philosophy, gives a rather personal account of the connections between himself and Kaila in an interview in The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka (in the Library of Living Philosophers collection). Hintikka identifies Kaila as his original inspiration, discusses his connection with von Wright, and makes some remarks on Vienna Circle’s influence coming to an end (referring obviously to the original Vienna Circle project). His interviewer, Simo Knuuttila, is able to put provocative questions that evoke interesting responses on a variety of topics, including reflections on Carnap, Wittgenstein and Quine.

 

Sweden must be considered not only for those Universities — in particular Uppsala, Gotheburg and Lund — that established strong links with logical empiricism, but also as the country that produced the first Nordic philosophical journal in the analytic style: Theoria. The history of Theoria and its founder, Åke Petzäll, is well told by Johan Strang in the paper, “Between the National and the International – Theoria and the Logical Empiricists”. Over a long period, Theoria could have been described as a “journal of one man alone”; and Petzäll himself heavily influenced the general orientation of Swedish philosophy, based on a style of philosophy in the old tradition of the University of Lund – the so-called “Oxford of Sweden”.

 

Petzäll visited Vienna in 1932 and wrote a small book reflecting upon his conversations with Viennese philosophers, especially Friedrich Weismann. Theoria was launched just three years later, in 1935, becoming an important forum for the exchange of ideas and criticism between the networks of Logical Empiricism and the philosophers of the Nordic countries. By the end of the thirties Theoria had become closely linked with Logical Empiricism. Works by Carnap, Ayer, Hempel and Oppenheim, Popper and Tarski were typically reviewed in the journal, and many logical empiricists, like Neurath and Hempel published in it. A curiosity: the first publication of Hempel’s paradox of confirmation was in French at the request of Petzäll who wanted to promote the journal at the 9th International Congress in Philosophy in Paris (1937). Also Victor Kraft (1880-1975), a member of the Vienna Circle who was to become later the supervisor of Paul Federated (1924-1994), published on Theoria during a period when Petzäll sent monthly packages of food to Vienna. Unlike Erkenntnis, which was the official journal of Logical Empiricism, Theoria continued to publish papers reflecting different philosophical trends and hosted a debate between Uppsala Philosophy vs. Logical Empiricism, both of which emphasized the importance of logical analysis. Neurath had been contacted by the Danish philosopher Alf Ross (1899-1979), who had studied with Axel Hägerström (1868-1939), one of the chief representatives of the Uppsala school and influenced by neo-Kantianism. Neurath subsequently promoted the diffusion of the Uppsala antimetaphysical position. In a detailed report (pp.78-88), it is shown the development of Uppsala School: at the beginning, one of the most relevant representatives of Uppsala School, Einar Tegen (1884-1965), presented a very antagonist stance towards Logical Empiricism, but later other scholars like Ingemar Hedenius (1908-1982), a pupil of Adolf Phalén (1884-1931), developed a more sympathetic attitude.

 

Traditionally Sweden had an anti-metaphysical tradition, centered mainly in the University in Uppsala; but this tradition was not intrinsically connected with the development of modern logic. Although it is normally accepted that Swedish analytic tradition was originated by Alex Hägerström, the paper of Johan Strang shows the relevance of other influences and the important role of Åke Petzäll and his efforts in the diffusion of new ideas through Theoria. Petzäll may also have had an indirect role in the development of formal logic, which was missing in Uppsala. But Petzäll was not only the founder of Theoria. A relevant part of the history of the role of Petzäll within Logical Empiricism is told by Thomas Umbel, in “The Nature and Status of Scientific Metatheory. The Debate between Otto Neurath and Åke Petzäll”. In 1936 Theoria published a debate between Petzäll and Neurath – who wrote a review of Petzäll’s Zum Methodenproblem der Erkenntnisforschung (1935), where the author had given a strong criticism of both the physicalistic and naturalistic trends within the Vienna Circle. One of the main worries of Petzäll was the difficulty of keeping genetic or causal and normative issues sharply distinct; their purported distinctiveness was for him a myth, just like the distinction between analytic and synthetic. Empirical and logical considerations need to find some space within which they connect or at least work together; Neurath, in his replies, eventually reached the idea of the distinction between two types of metatheory, making this debate a direct contribution to the overall debate within logical empiricism.

 

Another influence came from Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), who was a refugee in Sweden, and a friend of Petzäll, and was thus “able to continue his unique neo-Kantian career and dialogue with the logical empiricists”. Cassirer settled down for a time in Uppsala and, later, the University of Gothenburg created a chair for him. However, with the possibility of a German invasion of Sweden, he left for the US, where he taught until 1945. In this connection, Thomas Mormann discusses the debate in the theory of concepts between Cassirer, Schlick and the Swedish Philosopher Konrad Marc-Wogau (1902-1991), who was Professor of philosophy in Uppsala from 1946 to 1968. The debate between Cassirer, Schlick and Mar-Wogau took place mainly in Theoria with many papers published between 1936 and 1940. Mormann’s article explores the details of this debate, explaining the criticism Marc Wogau devoted to Cassirer’s theory of the formation of concepts, and defending, in the end, Cassirer’s theory. The discussion supports the claim that “Begriffstheorie was a topic where philosophers of quite different orientations met. It exemplifies that once upon a time philosophers, who today are classified as belonging to allegedly quite different traditions, were engaged in discussing similar problems.” (p.179).

 

Denmark played a foundational role for Logical Empiricism in the Nordic Countries mainly through the work of Jørgen Jørgensen, who started his philosophical career with a break from neo-Kantianism that would have been critically received in Sweden. Jørgensen was important in the diffusion of the style of analytic philosophy and the strict interest in the analysis of scientific languages. He also had a promotional role in organizing the Second Congress for the Unity of Science in Copenaghen in 1936. In the paper, “Jørgen Jørgensen and Logical Positivism” Carl Henrik Koch offers a wide analysis of the work of Jørgensen, showing also the relevant connections between Jørgensen and the members of the Vienna Circle, met in 1930 at the 7th international congress of Philosophy in Oxford. After having been invited by Reichenbach in Berlin to give a lecture, Jørgensen arranged for both Carnap and Neurath to give lectures in Copenagen. He suggested to Carnap the title of Die Logische Sintax der Sprache, a book that Jørgensen reviewed in Erkenntnis.

 

In the thirties Jørgensen was a full a member of the neopositivistic movement, participating to the organizing committee of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science and being an associate editor of the Library of Unified Science (with Carnap, Frank and Morris). He had already done a profound work of reformation of the teaching of philosophy at the University of Copenaghen, where wide space was given to the science, including formal tools of logic and mathematics. He opposed Dilthey’s emphatic distinction between natural sciences and human sciences, stressing the similarity of method in both of them: the unity of science is methodological. Given these attitudes, it is easy to understand how Jørgensen’s ideas were welcomed by Neurath, who in 1938 wrote that “Jørgensen emphasises that all the complicated and most important scientific theorizing starts with the experience and language of our daily life, that we also have to test all the theoretical results of all the sciences by means of the same aids. Jøgensen givens in his lectures not only a program of the Unity of Science but also shows this Unity as an actuality”. (p.166)

 

 

The Netherlands and Iceland   

 

The Nordic countries are closely linked by history and, for all of them except Finland also by linguistic connections (and  Finland even has a Swedish speaking minority). In addition, some other countries bear important similarities to the Nordic countries. The Netherlands, for example, exhibits some similarities in philosophical culture, whose explanation might be of interest. Therefore, also if the anthology of northern countries does not have a space for it, some remarks may complete the landscape. It is reasonable then to devote some attention to the development of the Signific group, one of the main factors that helped to provide some kind of common core with the Nordic countries. A discussion can be found in a paper by Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (“Significs and the Origin of Analytic Philosophy”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 70, 2009), on which I rely in what follows.

 

Significs was a circle founded in 1922 by Frederick van Eeden (1860-1932), Jan Brouwer (1881-1966), Gerrit Mannoury (1867-1956) and Jacques van Ginneken (1877-1945). It was composed mainly of mathematicians with strong political interests (in socialist or communist ideas) and philosophical interests in natural language and in psychology. This last aspect is mainly due to the founder Van Eeden, who had contact with William James (1842-1910) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Among those who participated in the Signific group we may mention the mathematician David Van Dantzig (1900-1959) and the journalist Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924), a Jewish communist who was assassinated probably for his anti-zionist stance. The connection between the Signific and the Vienna Circles were mainly through Brouwer’s teacher, Gerrit Mannoury, who was in close contact with Neurath and contributed to the forums associated with the Vienna Circle and the Unity of Science movement. Although Mannoury and Brouwer had strong theoretical differences in the philosophy of mathematics, Mannoury accepted Brouwer’s claim of the supremacy of intuitionistic logic in the analysis of natural language, as compared with classical logic (Frege-Peano-Russell). Brouwer himself, as is well known, gave a talk in Vienna that strongly influenced the transition to a new phase of Wittgenstin’s thought. Another link was through Fredrik Waismann (1896-1959), who, together with Otto Neurath, was members of the International Group for the Study of Significs from the 1930s.

 

Notwithstanding the persecution of communists, most of these authors did not leave the Netherlands and represented an element of continuity in the kind of philosophical culture – with its links with the analysis of language and logic – that is still typically found in Dutch departments of philosophy and in centers like the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FOLLI). Therefore, although not, strictly speaking, “part” of the Nordic countries, the Netherlands evidently represent a historical continuity with the past of Northern Europe, continuity which – as mentioned earlier – was broken in Germany, Poland and southern Europe.

 

But there is still a gap in the analysis of Nordic Countries presented in the volume here discussed: what about Iceland? It is true, as Manninen and Stadler evidently assume, that there does not appear to have been any very direct or robust connection between Icelandic philosophers and the Vienna Circle. Research reveals mostly negatives, but with some relevant positives, not reported in Manninen and Stadler’s volume.

 

The University of Iceland was founded in 1911, at which time few Icelandic scholars had philosophical training, although Guðmundur Finnbogason (1873-1944) and Ágúst H. Bjarnason (1875-1952) studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Copenhagen.

 

Wittgenstein visited Iceland in 1912 with his friend David Pinsent and spent much of the time instructing Pinsent in aspects of what was to become an important part of the Vienna Circle’s philosophy. However, Wittgenstein did not interact with any Icelandic philosophers during his visit, or later, as far as we know.

 

Philosophy was not taught as a degree subject in Iceland until 1972. Prior to that, philosophy professors – the first of them being Ágúst H. Bjarnason – were, for most of the time, in charge of a course in philosophical propaedeutics, following a Norwegian model and therefore with a link to the tradition fostered by Arne Naess.

 

After the establishment of a B.A. degree program in philosophy at the University of Iceland in 1972 and the assumption of the professorship by the Belgian-educated Páll Skúlason (1945- ) in 1975, the Philosophy Department of the University of Iceland has grown to eight members, with interests and specializations in both Analytic and Continental philosophy, and in the history of philosophy, in a friendly mixture.  

 

Þorsteinn Gylfason (1942-2005), who from 1972 until his death taught philosophy at the University of Iceland, was an undergraduate at Harvard and later a student of Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) at Oxford. He was personally and philosophically acquainted with Peter Geach (1916-) and Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001)—both students of Wittgenstein—and with Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000), whose thought was, as is well known, directly influenced by that of Wittgenstein. All of these philosophers paid philosophical visits to Iceland at Þorsteinn’s behest and interacted with Icelandic philosophers. Þorsteinn himself taught and wrote robustly about Wittgenstein.

 

Mikael M. Karlsson (1943- ), who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Iceland, where he has taught for nearly 40 years was, from early in his career, an admirer of the late Wesley Salmon (1925-2001) and was Salmon’s informal colleague at the University of Pittsburgh. Karlsson has taught and written about certain of Salmon’s ideas. Salmon wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1950 under Hans Reichenbach, who had founded the so-called Berlin Circle, a philosophical group whose orientation was similar to that of its Austrian counterpart; and, in many respects, Salmon continued and developed the work of Reichenbach. This is perhaps a weak, and rather indirect, link with the Vienna Circle, but is not entirely negligible. Mikael M. Karlsson has also been heavily influenced by Quine, both through Quine’s writings and through personal interaction; and he was likewise an advisee of Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009), who was influenced significantly by Wittgenstein while at Cambridge.

 

With these indirect links, Icelandic philosophy, too, can claim some connection with the philosophers of the Vienna Circle. The particular geographical position of Iceland, between US and Europe, is another element of the connection with analytic philosophy, although the term is not so relevant in countries where there is a continuity of philosophical tradition from the pre-war environment. The term “analytic philosophy” is not a sound category and is typically avoided in the Nordic countries and in the US, where the tradition stemming from the Vienna Circle has a strong grounding, although—as Hillary Putnam has remarked—the term may be useful in southern countries or in Central and Eastern Europe, where connections with the tradition were severed after the Second World War. These last remarks bring us to the general background behind the publication of this volume.

 

 

The Analytic tradition and the Continental Break

 

It is well known that World War II had a disastrous impact upon the development European philosophy during the second half of the twentieth century, an impact that has lasted until today. The war destroyed the wonderful net of connections among philosophers and among other academics: the Vienna Circle, the Berlin Circle, Significs, the Peano School, and the Warsaw School interacting on the European Continent, with strong ties also to Great Britain. With these connections largely destroyed by the war, the great debates in the philosophy of logic, language and science were abandoned, and Continental philosophy became heavily pervaded by hermeneutics under the influence of Heidegger, amalgamated with remnants of Marxism and phenomenology.

 

Many of the best philosophers from Austria, Poland and Germany left Europe during the Nazi period and developed their careers in the United States, where their contribution to the development of American philosophy was enormous (just think of Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Carl Hempel, Hans Reichenbach and Alfred Tarski), or alternatively in Great Britain (think of Wittgenstein, Waismann and Popper).

 

There was a mainstream of European philosophy that was stimulated by the discovery of the new logic and was greatly interested in the development of science. Why did the Nordic countries — in contrast to the southern countries and Central Europe — resist what may be called “deviation” from the mainstream of European philosophy? Why was the analytic tradition that began, bloomed and expanded in pre-war Europe preserved after the war only in the Nordic countries?

 

The continuity with the analytic tradition in philosophical research and teaching in the Nordic countries is no longer a mystery, given the detailed history of the influential philosophical figures in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark in the post-war period presented in this anthology. Part of the reason for the continuity and robustness of the “Nordic circle” of philosophy is simply the fact that Nordic philosophers did not abandon Europe and kept the links among themselves alive within the Nordic sphere, while central and Southern Europe, deprived of many of their best philosophers, abandoned the neopositivist tradition, and the analytic style connected with it, and probably threw out the baby with the bath water.

 

The concentration of the present book on the specific relations of the Nordic countries with the Vienna Circle runs the risk of lapsing into an historical survey of old theories and missing the general framework which developed from the lively connections among European philosophical centers. I think there is a way of reading this book not only for the purpose of registering the links with the Vienna Circle, but to better understand the uniqueness of the contemporary Nordic tradition in philosophy as compared with other parts of Europe. The close and direct connections between Vienna Circle and some of the founders of philosophy in the Nordic countries help us to better understand the reasons for the continuity of philosophical tradition that came to link the Nordic countries more closely to American philosophy than to Continental philosophy so-called, although in fact there is nothing more “Continental” than analytic philosophy. The book reveals hidden connections, is full of details and quotations from personal communications and theoretical debates and helps us to understand the absolutely unique situation of philosophy in the Nordic countries after the Second World War, as compared with other parts of Europe. The anthology therefore represent part of a wider history of philosophy in Europe and gives Nordic countries a primacy of continuity of the European philosophical tradition in contrast to the “deviation” of the Continental philosophy (I refer to the thesis of Tugendhat, according to whom analytic philosophy is the proper heir of the great tradition of philosophy since Aristotle). But, due also to the return of the old traditions implanted in the US, the analytic style of philosophy is now coming back to its original home; and it is reassuring to see that not only central Europe and Eastern Europe, but also Southern countries, under the initiative of European Society for Analytic Philosophy, are beginning to recover their connections with the great European tradition, through a series of meetings devoted to fostering analytic philosophy – These are called “Latin Meetings in Analytic Philosophy”. This “Southern circle” recalls the tradition of meetings within the Nordic sphere that played an important role in the past and that have continued, and developed, up to the present day.

 

It looks as if “Mediterranean” Europe is “recovering” from a long period of philosophical turmoil and is ready to re-build and reinforce its broken connections with the past, following the example of the Nordic countries.

 

Philip J. Anderson and Dag Blanck (eds.), Norwegians and Swedes in the United States: Friends and Neighbors (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012)

Book review (editorial review), , , , , , ,

The collection is divided into four distinct sections—Context, Culture, Conflict and Community—each undertaking a thorough examination of the relationships and interactions between the largest immigration populations from Scandinavian to the United States. As the subheadings suggest, a comprehensive study of the relationship between Norwegians and Swedes in the United States cannot be sustained on comparison alone. Indeed, as Donna R. Gabaccia outlines in the very useful foreword to the book, the narrative of this relationship continues to develop new strains due in part to increasing attention to “inter-ethnic perspectives” concerning American immigration history in general and Scandinavian interactions in particular. It is the developing story of Scandinavian “inter-ethnic perspectives” that the collection aims to uncover and narrate and as a whole this aim is successful. As Gabaccia rightly points out, however, the collection downplays the “importance of contention” between the two groups, by choosing to highlight “the Americanization that brought both groups of immigrates closer to each other.”

 

The first section on context contains two substantial introductory chapters: “Friends and Neighbors? Patterns of Norwegian-Swedish Interaction in the United States” by co-editor Dag Blanck and “Norwegians and Swedes in America: Some Comparisons” by H. Arnold Barton. The opening chapters strive to broadly describe the identities of each group and the patterns of interactions between them. Blanck develops a useful chronology for grappling with the complex issue, dividing recognizable patterns of interaction into three periods. Blanck emphasizes that although there has yet to be a systematic and comprehensive study of the history of the Scandinavians in the United States, certain patterns emerge from the studies that do exist. When division did occur between Norwegian and Swedish immigrants it was along religious lines, more so than national ones. In matters of the heart, however, Norwegians and Swedes found each other the most desirable and within the political sphere they were each others’ closest allies. Barton’s comparative study of the two groups is admittedly more speculative in nature, but no less productive in results by focusing on the differences between the groups. Some of Barton’s findings are less surprising than others. That the Norwegians were the more nationalist of the two immigrant groups makes sense in term of Norway’s political development over the nineteenth century ending with its independence in 1905. That Norwegian Americans wrote more novels than Swedes was unexpected. As was the conclusion that Swedish Americans generally outpaced their Scandinavian neighbors in the sciences and technology, the visual arts and business. As Barton states, differences such as those I have pointed out are compelling and open new lines of investigation for further research. How to assess why these differences occurred, however, is not as easy or apparent.

 

The second section examines the central position that diverse aspects of culture held in the Norwegian and Swedish immigrant experience. The following three chapters stood out: Odd S. Lovoll’s opening chapter, “Preserving a Cultural Heritage Across Boundaries: A Comparative Perspective on Riksföreningen Sverigekontakt and the Nordmanns-Forbundet” skillfully depicts how even as societies were started in both Norway and Sweden to promote home colonization, the two societies mentioned in the title were founded to cope with expanding populations outside the nation state. Lovoll’s explanation of how each society aimed to create a notion of worldwide nationality founded on the promotion of cultural retention within emigrant populations is thought provoking, particularly regarding the underlying conservative politics at its core, a point I would have liked to see more thoroughly developed. In “Freedom, Identity, and Double Perspectives: Representations of the Migrant Experience in the Novels of Vilhelm Moberg and O.E. Rølvaag,” Ingeborg Kongslien illustrates that although each author penned works of historical fiction and not historical accounts per se, due to the authors’ personal experiences the novels nevertheless provide ample and reliable insights into Scandinavian emigration, including those historical, psychological, sociological and existential. James P. Leary’s “Är Du Svenske?”–”Norsk! Norsk!”: Folk Humor and Cultural Difference in Scandinavian America” is the highlight of the section as it is rich with familiar jokes that become compelling examples of the development of cultural difference between Norwegian and Swedish Americans. Leary convincingly maps how “Scandihoovian” humor is more about negotiating relationships between Norwegians and Swedes in the United States than about any actual reference to the homeland. Indeed, he illustrates that what often appears as insider teasing is in reality a way to communicate cultural difference to the wider, and often undiscerning, American public.

 

The third section of the collection identifies areas where conflict arose between the Scandinavian immigrant groups. The first two chapters examine how Norwegian independence affected relationships between Norwegian and Swedish Americans, while the second two chapters scrutinize the complex divides, factions and mergers within the varying denominations of the Lutheran Church in the United States. Jørn Brøndal’s “We are Norwegians and Swedes Now, Not Scandinavians”: The Impact of Norwegian Independence on Scandinavian American Politics in the Midwest” and Ulf Jonas Björk’s “An End to Brotherhood?” Swedes and Norwegians in America Discuss the 1905 Union Dissolution” are complimentary chapters that detail the ramifications of Norway’s independence on political and social alignments between Norwegian and Swedish Americans. The conclusions of both chapters reflect back to my earlier statement concerning the collection overall: conflicts were limited and those that arose were short-lived. As each chapter suggests, pan-Scandinavianism seems to have post- dated any animosity, albeit at varying levels across time and place. Kurt W. Peterson’s “A Question of Conscious: Minnesota’s Norwegian American Lutherans and the Teaching of Evolution” is the stand out piece of the collection. Peterson targets the imperative position that Norwegian American Lutherans held in early twentieth century debates concerning the status of evolution in public schools and by doing so, places current discourse on the subject into a new, and nuanced historical context. The chapter is filled with—what was for me at least—compelling insight into how Lutheran history supported the separation of church and state, thus ultimately rendering null the scheme to legislate the exclusion of evolution in Minnesota’s public schools and universities. Peterson asserts that, “many Lutherans wanted nothing to do with [legislation] because they wanted nothing to do with the Reformed tradition. Their fight was not simply over the teaching of evolution; for them, the heart of their Lutheran theological heritage was at stake.” Equally compelling is the way in which Peterson details the close ideological ties between Norwegian American Lutheranism and the broader Evangelical movement.

 

The closing section of the collection is a fitting bookend to a study that casts a wide net as it examines both distinct features and broad trends within the Norwegian and Swedish American community. That this section is the largest reinforces the collection’s unifying intentions. Each chapter features a case study of a specific cluster of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants within the United States. The section is rich with description and details, demographics and specifics, whether investigating the nontraditional immigrant position held by many Norwegian and Swedish engineers and architects, as in Per-Olof Grönberg’s contribution, or chronicling the narrative of an insulated Scandinavian enclave on the shores of Lake Superior, as in Philip J. Anderson’s piece. All but one chapter, however, focuses on Scandinavian communities in the Midwest. The exception being Jennifer Eastman Atterbery’s “Scandinavian’s in the Rocky Mountain West: Pragmatic and Programmatic.” Atterbery’s very interesting examination of Scandinavian settlements in Montana and LDS Utah (touching only briefly on California) broadens the scope of what is an otherwise very regional-specific section. In fact, the exclusion of the West is one of the shortcomings of the collection as a whole and I would have liked the same rigorous scholarship that pervades the collection applied to Norwegian and Swedish communities in California, Oregon and Washington, or for that matter, to those in New York and the East. One of the most outstanding features in this section is the way in which personal narrative and family history interjects into large-scale and oftentimes characterless demographic statistics. In more than one instance, particularly in Byron J. Nordstrom’s “Norwegians and Swedes in Willmar, Minnesota, in the Early Twentieth Century,” general and sweeping statistical information is transformed from the tedious to the compelling by granting the dates, numbers, and anonymous names on the page, a narrative. By fleshing out both the communities under study and particular individuals within those communities, the closing section is a fitting end to what is a comprehensive, informative and insightful study of Norwegians and Swedes in the United States. The information presented in this study will most certainly fuel and encourage subsequent research and publication in the field.