The articles of this volume treat the expansion of the Nordic ideology in the first half of the twentieth century. They concentrate on the amalgamation of scientific, religious and political features, which transformed the idea of the North into a mainstay of extreme nationalism. Lacking positive norms and values, the Nordic idea depended on the opposition against everything deemed un-Nordic. Volkisch Nordicism shared with conventional forms of nationalism the enmity with Judaism and Bolshevism and to a lesser extent with Anglo-Americanism and Catholicism. Beyond that, it...

Academic exchange is one of the cornerstones of public diplomacy. Receiving foreign academics is one way of influencing foreign elites in an attempt to build goodwill and stable international networks. The result is that academic mobility and the internationalization of higher education and research have always been directly affected by foreign policy decisions and diplomatic considerations and still are. In Public Diplomacy and Academic Mobility in Sweden, Andreas Akerlund analyses Sweden s scholarship programs for foreign academics in a long-term perspective."