The geopolitics of the ‘Modern Breakthrough’: Cultural internationalisation and geopolitical decline in Scandinavia 1870–1914

ABSTRACT The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway (sometimes including Finland and Iceland) have been depicted as small states punching above their demographic, political, military or economic weight in international affairs, especially in the post-Second World War era. The article historicises this notion by discussing nineteenth-century Scandinavian cultural elites and opinion makers who began portraying the region as culturally homogenous and distinctly modern. Coincidentally or consequently, this occurred at a time when Sweden and Denmark, having ceded their status as Northern European great powers to Russia and Prussia, were acutely preoccupied with reorienting themselves geopolitically. Expanding on the historiography of global positioning strategies in Scandinavia, the article centres on the interface between the realms of politics and cultural production during this period of transition. It highlights a group of self-declared cultural modernisers that in the 1880s came together under the banner of the Modern Breakthrough. Members of the group merit attention as public intellectuals advocating new ways of understanding Scandinavia’s place in the world by redefining the relationship between the local and the global. By focusing on their role as catalysts in a collective reorientation towards non-military claims to international relevance and status as an example of space-making practices, we can shed new light on region-building in Scandinavia against the backdrop of changing social and political realities.