Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North

"An engaging, layered look into a culture complex enough both to produce stylish rain gear and to embrace the foul weather that necessitates it." -The New York Times Book Review

We fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and healthy outdoor lifestyle; we devour their crime fiction. Even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavi...