Outsiders have long viewed Scandinavia as special, from the ancient Greek myth of a place ‘where the Sun goes to rest’ to the admiration held today for the region’s universal welfare, equality and peacefulness. But the story of Scandinavia is also one of expansion and religious strife, of war and occupation, of famine and plague.

From the first peoples who followed the ice sheet north at the end of the last Ice Age to Viking expeditions, from Cold War bridge-building to ranking as the happiest nations in the world, Mart Kuldkepp masterfully charts the story of the wider Nordic region – from Finland in the East across to Iceland and Greenland in the West.

As formerly neutral Finland and Sweden join NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this timely history explores the region’s geopolitics, the origins of the welfare state and asks whether life in Scandinavia is quite as hygge as it might seem.