Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World

The grave problems throughout the world involving ethnic groups and multicultural societies make studies such as this particularly useful. The place of ethnic minorities in the Nordic countries, with their long traditions of national identity, integral nationalism and cultural homogeneity, is of interest from at least three comparative viewpoints. First, the historical, institutional and cultural similarity of those countries make them a unique field for internal comparison. Second, the Nordic countries provide especially well documented and researched models for the study of ethnicity in other Old World countries based on integral nationality. And finally, the countries offer instructive comparisons with ones of more recent origin created by multiethnic immigration, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil.