An examination of representations of human migration in three
centuries of Northern European literature.
Migration is a frequent topic of many debates nowadays, whether it
concerns refugees from war-torn areas or the economic pros and cons of
the mobility of multinational corporations and their employees. Yet such
migration has always been a part of the human experience, and its
dimensions--with its shifting nature, manifestations, and
consequences--were often greater than we can imagine today.
In this book, ten scholars from Czechia, Denmark, the Netherlands,
Norway, Poland, and Sweden focus on how migration has manifested itself
in literature and culture through the nineteenth, twentieth, and early
twenty-first centuries in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland.
Examining the theme of migration as it relates to questions of identity,
both national and individual, the authors argue that migration almost
always leads to a disturbance of identity and creates a potential for
conflicts between individuals and larger groups. The book digs deep into
such cases of disturbance, disruption, and hybridization of identity as
they are represented in three centuries of literary works from the
European North.