Background characters? The Nordic region and European colonialism

Marta Grzechnik

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the literature regarding colonialism in the Nordic countries. Although the Nordic region is not commonly associated with colonialism, a critical look at its direct and indirect involvement in the process of European expansion has recently been developed in scholarship on the region. Direct involvement refers to the control of overseas territories (e.g. in India, modern day Ghana, and the Caribbean) and active participation in the networks of trade (including slave trade), shipping, missionary activity, etc. Indirect involvement, or colonial complicity, refers to the idea that Nordic societies produced and reproduced systems of knowledge that underpinned the colonial system and the global racial hierarchies.