Post-War Scandinavian Historiography: Continuity and the Rise of Resource-Centric Analysis

The immediate post-war decades in Scandinavia were defined by a new generation of historians who, while emerging from the shadow of pre-war giants, solidified a distinct professional and thematic direction. Their common characteristic was a sustained focus on medieval and early modern political and economic history, often analyzed through the lens of resource control. Across Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, these scholars established interpretative frameworks that dominated academic discourse for a generation, blending traditional chronology with innovative socio-economic analysis.

In Sweden, Erik Lönnroth set a transformative agenda with works like Sverige och Kalmarunionen (1934). He reinterpreted late medieval power struggles as conflicts over economic resources—trade and taxation—demonstrating a clear Max Weberian influence. This resource-centric analysis was further developed in his studies on medieval taxation and military organization. For decades, his work was the obligatory point of departure for studying Swedish medieval power structures, inspiring both support and opposition.

Lönnroth’s paradigm was extended by Sven A. Nilsson, who applied similar resource-control analysis to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His work meticulously detailed the tussle between kings and nobles over estates (län) and military obligations, later spearheading a major project on seventeenth-century Swedish society. Another key figure, Birgitta Odén, began her career analyzing state finances and trade policy in the sixteenth century before diversifying into environmental history and historiography, later championing the influence of the Annales School in Sweden.

The post-war period was also marked by profound methodological debates. The empathetic, source-critical tradition represented by Nils Ahnlund was challenged by the more structurally oriented approaches of Lönnroth and Nilsson. Sten Carlsson bridged these worlds; while rooted in political history, his innovative social history work, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner (1949), used statistical analysis to examine the dissolution of the estate system and the conditions of unmarried women. He also pioneered large-scale research on Swedish emigration.

Economic history flourished as a distinct discipline, led by figures like Artur Attman, who studied the sixteenth-century Russian market, and Karl-Gustav Hildebrand, a historian of banking and industry. Their collaborative multi-volume history of the Fagersta ironworks set a new standard for industrial history. In Lund, Lennart Jörberg established a distinctive profile through quantitative studies of price history and long-term economic trends.

In Denmark, post-war discussion similarly centered on medieval and early modern foundations. Aksel E. Christensen’s seminal Kongemagt og aristokrati (1945) offered a new conception of Danish feudalism, framing it as a European-connected struggle for military and fiscal dominance. Alongside him, Kristof Glamann earned international acclaim with his classic study Dutch Asiatic Trade 1620–1740 (1958) and later wielded significant influence through research policy leadership.

Danish historiography in this period was notably individualistic, with scholars pursuing distinct personal agendas. Fridlev Skrubbeltrang innovatively analyzed the lower strata of agrarian society, while Povl Bagge shaped debate as a long-serving editor focused on historical theory. Niels Skyum-Nielsen began with rigorous source criticism of medieval documents but later broke tradition with studies on medieval women and slaves, eventually exploring media manipulation. Notably, research on the recent past was limited until Jørgen Hæstrup pioneered oral history methods in his study of the Danish occupation, despite initial scholarly distrust.

In Norway, a pre-war trio dominated the immediate post-war landscape. Andreas Holmsen focused on medieval demography and settlement history using a controversial retrospective method, linking economic structures to political development. Jens Arup Seip shifted from medieval studies to become a masterful analyst of nineteenth-century politics, combining psychological insight with systemic analysis in influential works like his essay “Fra embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat” (1963).

Sverre Steen analyzed the social economy, notably contrasting a subsistence-based culture with a monetary one in his volume Det gamle samfunn (1957). A new generation soon emerged, including Ingrid Semmingsen, who became Norway’s first female full professor and a pathbreaker in emigration studies. Others like Knut Mykland (studying the 1814 secession from Denmark), Alf Kaartvedt (analyzing nineteenth-century conservatism), and Edvard Bull, Jr. (a pioneering historian of the working class) ensured the vitality of Norwegian historical research into the 1960s and 1970s.

In summary, the first fifteen post-war years in Scandinavian historiography were characterized by the continuation and professionalization of pre-war debates, particularly within medieval and early modern studies. The dominant new trend was a structural, resource-based analysis of power. However, the seeds of future change were being sown, with the gradual emergence of social history, economic history, and pioneering work in oral and contemporary history setting the stage for the thematic diversification that would define the subsequent decades. This period solidified a robust, empirically grounded, and argumentative scholarly tradition that remained central to the national historical consciousness of each Nordic country.